


draw the curtain back for Venus

by nsmorig



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: All Sorts of Nonsense, Bisexual Harry Potter, Conspiracy Theories, Disability, Fuckery, Gen, Harry Potter has ADHD, Magical Science, Mental Health Issues, Muggle Technology, Physics, Politics, Potions, Redemption, The Deathly Hallows, The Golden Trio, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Tiny Little Character Studies, Various Bit-Part OCs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-02-26 09:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 23
Words: 35,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13233282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nsmorig/pseuds/nsmorig
Summary: If anyone was going to gouge out their own entire magical core and throw up the middle finger at the laws of time, it was Potter. That was his usual modus operandi; find the stupidest and most impossible option available, and take it with as much collateral damage as possible.First things first: Potter had just rescued the both of them, and had done it in such a way that left him once again at death’s door. That put them into known territory; Severus, once again, making sure Potter didn’t die.Or: Harry Potter tries to fix the world and Severus Snape tries to fix himself.





	1. red as fiery Mars

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [To Recollect the Future by oliversnape](https://archiveofourown.org/works/365648) by [oliversnape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliversnape/pseuds/oliversnape). 



> so I am... terrible at updates. But!! i have plans. and a schedule, and an outline. So this should update Mondays, regardless of if anyone reads it or not. I may or may not have nicked the idea of snape-and-harry time-travel fix-it from M. OliverSnape, but i hope this'll be reasonably original.
> 
> Epigraph and title from The Old Astronomer.

 

_i must say good-bye, my pupil, for i cannot longer speak;_

_draw the curtain back for venus, ere my vision grows too weak:_

_it is strange the pearly planet should look red as fiery mars –_

_t’will mercifully guide me on my way amongst the stars._

 

Harry had gone calmly to his death, but here-- in the in-between space, where he could _breathe_ \-- he was having trouble remembering why. He had stood calmly for the curse, and now in the after, at the close, he hated himself for it. He should have fought; if he was to die, if he had to die as he did, he should have brought some of the other fuckers with him.

 

The anger was almost physical; in this hallucinatory space it was all he was sure of. Blood boiled beneath his skin, his bones hummed with magic, it leaked from his hands and his eyes, staining the bleach-white vaulting of King’s Cross with red and gold and rage--

 

\-- Dumbledore, pale as the grave, as bone of the father, wavering before him, beseeching but the noise is indistinguishable from the buzzing in his brain--

 

\-- and the station is on fire, and the glass of the arches is glowing and melting, and something was hidden here but it is burning up now, it is burning to death in the fire and screaming--

 

\-- what a glorious sound, the scream sliding into the spit and venom of Parseltongue and that’s Voldemort, that’s the spirit of Tom Riddle, and he’s dying--

 

\-- something else is dying here, something is dead, something black and silvery is visible through the space where the glass used to be, another spirit just like him--

 

\-- _the red of his mother’s hair, the green of her eyes, killing green like his, once again beseeching, but not to him, and the image is false and flickers--_

 

\-- whoever else is here is coming closer, and their anger is cold and dark where Harry’s is hot and bright, but they are just as angry--

 

\-- _we should have burned it while we had the chance,_ it says, _I should have fought harder_ _, my job isn't done,_ and Harry feels his magic red-hot, and calls it forth, and says _is it ever done_ _,_ and there's a great deal of noise, and there's a great deal of silence.

  


⁂

  


The silence of the grave was not silent. Something creaked, and trees whispered, and wind snaked its path through distant rafters. It was a comforting susurrus.

 

Severus felt lighter - the aches of war and of the last decade were lifted from him, and even sprawled prone on the floor as he was no joints protested.  The beast’s bite troubled him no more, and even the lingering ache of nerve damage from the Dark Lord’s service as gone. The image of Lily, flickering and shining in the dark, had not convinced him of his death, but this lightness beyond the living was inimitable; more than that, it was pleasant. Here was an afterlife he could get behind; here was proof that maybe his wretchedness was not so wretched; that, perhaps, he had redeemed himself.

 

This delusion persisted until he opened his eyes.

 

This was the Shrieking Shack, and it was just as derelict as before; the dust and rot lay thick like it had never been disturbed by the invading Death Eaters. The sky, through the cracks in the boards, was not the pale glowing grey of the dawn that it had been as he lay dying, nor was it lit with spellfire as in the battle; it was midnight-black, the dead of night.

 

He was struck with a sudden fear that the dark was the only thing outside; that the only thing in this afterlife was the Shrieking Shack, and he was to be trapped right here for the rest of time. He scrambled to his feet, coughing in the clouds of thick dust he’d kicked up, and lurched to the window. The worm-riddled wood was the work of less than a minute to break, and he hung over the crumbling ledge in relief, taking great lungfuls of the cold night air.

 

The forest lay to the right, and Hogsmeade to the left, and presumably behind the shack lay Hogwarts; his school, lying in ruins, won for either the Dark or the Light. Or, if it were the afterlife, perhaps it was as it was before the Dark Lord had commanded him to break it and mould it in the image of his cruelty, perhaps even before the _first_ war, when it was still a haven and a home to him.

 

The shack was outside of the wards, and so he could apparate from there to the edge of the Forest, although that took more out of him than it should have. The trees obscured the castle, but not the stars; and in any case, he’d been a reckless child, and could walk the path blinded.

 

⁂

 

Severus walked in darkness, not out of any aesthetic sensibility but because he was far too aware that he had enemies, particularly among the dead, and he did not know how many had died in these woods. Lighting his wand was not worth the risk of being seen. The battle had raged long and bright over the castle and wandered over every part of the school, the hidden parts just as torn apart as the towers.

 

The forest, like the hell-hole, was undisturbed. It smelt of soil and recent rain, and there was no sign of any battle at all. It was barely lit; the moon was full, but the canopy was an effective curtain, and the ground was an expanse of black.

 

He walked for some time, alone with his thoughts; and it seemed that he truly was alone, because there was no noise to indicate a single living animal in the whole forest. No bats were hunting tonight, no foxes or thestrals or spiders rustled the undergrowth. There had been a breeze,  but it was silent now.

 

It was because of this complete, eclipsing silence that Severus heard it. Were the night less eerie, more alive, the noise of a sleeping child’s breathing at that distance would have been indistinguishable from the white noise of the forest. As it were, it cut to the quick, and Severus took off running towards it; he had wandered the woods once, and knew exactly why someone defenceless should not.

 

⁂

 

The earth fell away below his feet; some power had carved a crater, several metres deep, and the air here smelt faintly of burning. Severus murmured a panicked ‘lumos,’ afraid of stepping right onto the child in the black; the ground, where it was illuminated, looked to be blackened and melted as if by an incredible heat. Parts of the earth had liquefied and flowed, and reflected his wandlight like water.

 

The child was lying sprawled at the bottom of the crater, cracked glasses on his face and his pajamas charred; he breathed slowly and evenly and seemed entirely calm.

 

Severus thought it might be the first time he had ever seen Potter looking even slightly peaceful.


	2. fled is that music; do I wake, or sleep?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> whoops

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'mondays,' she said, as though she didn't have homework she would procrastinate away with different, more interesting writing. 
> 
> epigraph and title from 'ode to a nightingale,' because john keats is almost as miserable and dramatic as severus snape.

_darkling I listen; and, for many a time_ _  
_ _I have been half in love with easeful death,_ _  
_ _call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,_ _  
_          _to take into the air my quiet breath._

 

The infant Potter floated behind Severus like an oddly shaped, oversized balloon. This part of the forest was a downward slope to the grounds of the school, and thankfully the trees had begun to thin, or Potter would have broken his head on a branch by now. The oppressive silence had begun to abate, and hearing the birds begin to shake themselves awake went some way towards knocking Severus out of his baffled calm.

 

Once the shock of dying had drained out of him, Severus found himself considerably more credulous. He’d never been particulary religious, and any kind of afterlife had seemed ridiculous to him. Occam’s razor came to mind; it made much more sense to believe that he’d been somehow revived than that A. he’d gone to some vaguely defined heaven and B. heaven looked like the Forbidden Forest. The eleven-year-old Boy Who Lived was rather harder to explain; his current theories ranged from first-year with malfunctioning polyjuice to a reverse aging charm to a broken Philosopher’s Stone to Potter actually being his punishment. Perhaps he was indeed dead, and was cursed to wander the earth with only Harry Potter at his most insufferable for company. That seemed too cruel for even the Old Testament God, though.

 

While he was consumed with this puzzle, he reached the edge of the forest, and upon looking up the image of the castle hit him like a brick to the solar plexus. Nothing was burnt or burning; no dark marks shone from the towers; it was beautifully, gloriously whole. He was fairly sure he could live (ha) with any punishment this afterlife could produce if Hogwarts was as it was. He may have been a truly terrible Headmaster, but it had, for a short time, been his school, it was where he’d grown up, and it was home to him in a way Spinner’s End had never been.

 

This was quite far enough. Potter could walk from here, even on his stubby little first-year legs.  Severus set him down from the _levicorpus_ , and shook his shoulder, but the brat only grumbled and turned over, and quite satisfyingly, covered himself in mud in the process. Severus sighed the sigh of the put-upon, and prodded him with the tip of his wand, at which Potter finally opened his eyes.

  


⁂

 

“Snape?” he muttered, sleep-hoarse, and then blinked himself into the land of the living. “Huh -- You died, didn’t you? I was there, I-- aren’t you-- are you a ghost?”

 

Snape’s expression didn’t seem to change, but he blurred before Harry’s eyes, and he realised that he was really, astonishingly tired. His eyes were closing against his will, and once again he slipped into the heavy sleep that accompanied his bone-deep exhaustion.

 

⁂

 

Severus was tired, and possibly dead, and very confused, and very worried, and he didn’t like it. But here was something he knew how to deal with;  Potter, once again in danger. That was not a normal reaction; the child was drugged, or concussed, and as long as the state of his arguably immortal soul was in the air, he had a job to do.  He could only hope that the medical wing was populated.

 

He flung a few diagnostic charms at the child, and they returned blank- but the boy whimpered in his sleep, as if in pain, and--

 

Oh.

 

Bugger.

 

He cast his mind back to the actual experience of death, as painful as it was; the park in Cokeworth, and the ghostly, wavering figure of Lily, and how he’d been so, so angry, and the fire that seemed to break into the vision from elsewhere. The fire had burnt an unnatural red, like lithium, and now in hindsight it was clear that it was magical -- but he hadn’t done it. The fire, then, must have come from someone else; someone else who had walked to his death, who had been prone to wild rage, someone who must have been thinking about the memories he’d given him, and who may, in his death, have done something stupid and impossible and entirely in-character.

 

He’d said ‘My job isn’t done;’ Potter was abysmal at occlumency, but he had enough training to hear that, when it had been thought straight at him, at his red anger; hadn’t the child agreed?

 

If anyone was going to gouge out their own entire magical core and throw up the middle finger at the laws of time, it was Potter. That was his usual modus operandi; find the stupidest and most impossible option available, and take it with as much collateral damage as possible.

 

First things first: Potter had just rescued the both of them, and had done it in such a way that left him once again at death’s door. That put them into known territory; Severus, once again, making sure Potter didn’t die.

 

The immediate threat, of course, was Potter’s evident magical exhaustion. Taking him to the medical wing would probably worsen his condition, as his recovering core would reject foreign magic, and most of the castle was saturated with it. However, thankfully, one of the Potions labs was completely clean of outside magics, in order to allow experimentation with incredibly volatile materials; Potter would have to make his recovery there.

 

⁂

 

Potter was sleeping quite calmly on a table, it was almost dawn, he had absolutely no idea what the date was, Potter’s mad owl had followed him into the lab and was glaring at him, he’d just died, he probably had classes to teach, and in conclusion, Severus Snape was on the verge of a breakdown, because absolutely nothing made any sense.

 

In this state of confusion, it was easy to fall back on the habits he’d developed for espionage - because until he had reason to believe otherwise, he was in deep cover as himself but seven years ago.

 

The first thing one does when entering cover, after establishing the identity, was to build some leeway. Produce explanations which will lead other people to give you a free pass on slightly erratic or unusual behaviour. In the short term, the simplest excuse is often a bad concussion; it allows one to disappear for a time to recuperate and explains away any number of lapses of memory or unusual responses. His past self had been kind enough to establish a reputation for excessive independence and a hatred of weakness, so his colleagues wouldn’t question him choosing to treat a concussion himself, rather than going to Pomfrey - unwise as that may be.

 

Potter, also, had enough foresight to provide himself with a ready-made excuse; judging by the weather and the greenery he’d seen, it was shortly after Potter had faced and killed Quirrell, so the child could explain most changes in behaviour with the excuse of trauma. The exhaustion, and where he’d found the boy, was also attributable to this; Potter was at least physically young, and could explain the burst of magic as a response to a night terror while sleepwalking, both fairly common responses to, for instance, burning a man to death with your hands.

 

There; an excuse.  Now that that mess was sorted out, or at least slightly de-tangled, he could deal with the more immediate problem; it was nonsense-O'clock in the morning, the last time he’d slept it was because he was dead, and he was somehow even more tired than the Potter child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey sev!! harry took out quirrell at the end of term!! you're the only humans in the castle!! ur students have all gone home!! u twit u don't need an excuse u need to dodge some house-elves!! all your thinking here has been useless you useless, paranoid man
> 
> if u have any suspicion of a concussion go to a doctor immediately Severus is an idiot dont be like him you'll break your brain


	3. my doings be as they were not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they're both awful and terrible and need a much longer nap and a cup of tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen. listen. its monday. i said monday and its monday. its late on monday, but u know what? i met a deadline. i deserve applause.
> 
> title and epigraph by thomas hardy, because once again, i love me some dramatic miserable poetry

 

 

_it wears me out to think of it,_

_to think of it;_

_i cannot bear my fate as writ,_

_i’d have my life unbe._

_i’d turn my memory to a blot,_

_make every relic of me rot,_

_my doings be as they were not,_

_and gone all trace of me!_

  


Harry was woken suddenly by a ‘pop,’ and in the ensuing mayhem managed to fling himself bodily off the table he’d been sleeping on and land with all his weight on his elbow. A house elf froze stock-still, a tea-stray piled high with fruit clutched in her bony hands, and squeaked. Harry clambered to his feet, clutching at a lab table, and blinked at her. Each of them stuttered almost identical apologies

 

The tableau of two very confused people repeating ‘sorry’ at each other was broken by Snape jerking awake in the Chesterfield across the room and mumbling “Potter, have you noticed that you’re barely taller than a house elf?”

 

Harry noticed this, and then couldn’t stop noticing it.

 

The tables in the potions labs were high, to make experiments easy to reach while standing, and in his first year he’d hated them, because standing up they were at shoulder height with him. Here and now, his face was close enough to the scarred wood to see the little snitches and stars etched into the surface. His hair wasn’t falling in his eyes, he was dizzy and nauseous and fucking exhausted, his vision was sharper and his head was pounding, his joints ached and the centre of his chest was cold and numb; for all that the lab was familiar and the lack of destruction comforting, he felt so disconnected from the body he was standing in that it did nothing to help, and the sight of Snape, whole and not bleeding and not dead, was-- inexplicable.

 

He goggled at Snape, at the house-elf, and at the desk, shook himself from head to toe and continued to stand in mute incomprehension.

  


⁂

 

Severus levered himself out of the overstuffed armchair, wincing at a crick in his back from sleeping upright, and gazed in mild concern at the Potter child, who appeared to be quivering.

 

The house-elf, he dismissed with a cruel look; Potter he couldn’t just ask to leave, to everyone’s detriment. As he watched the boy grew paler, meeting his gaze with the sort of wide-eyed panic that made it hard to remember that the mind inside that head was technically an adult.

 

Severus leaned back, reducing his silhouette, and softened his face; he was a miserable curmudgeon, but he wasn’t trying to make Potter’s mental state worse. “What’s the last thing you remember?” he asked, voice low.

 

⁂

 

The last thing that Harry remembered was green. Straightforward, made sense; he’d died.

 

Before that, it blurred. His thoughts were clearer than his actions; as he walked to his death he’d tried to smile. He’d thought of many things--

 

\-- electricity arcing to the ground, huge pylons falling around him, Hagrid huge and unconscious beside him, he thought he was going to die but _what_ a way to go, light and vertigo--

 

\-- Ron, in Grimmauld Place, plucking out Claire de Lune on that battered piano, faltering but getting faster--

 

\-- Ginny, at the wedding, in that white dress, a they took a turn about the floor and she smiled at him and he smiled back--

 

And in the forest, alone and cold and about to die, his heartbeat faltered and he smiled and oh, what a way to go.

 

Then he’d died.

 

Now he was here, and his skin fit him wrong, and he could barely breathe, and he knew what it means when you die and wake up again. It means your body isn’t yours anymore. You’re inferi, or you’re something worse. He felt like the snake in Bathilda Bagshot’s body, and he was hopeless and rotting around himself.

 

⁂

 

Oh, would you look at that, the child was hyperventilating.

 

And-- Wonderful. Absolutely fucking fantastic. Now he wasn’t breathing at all.

 

“Potter-- Potter, sit down. Breathe. Potter, you need to _breathe,_ ” Ground him, make him think, he’s caught in his head so bring him out of it. “Potter, listen to me, do you know where you are?”

 

The child swayed, and Severus was forced to grab his shoulders to steady him. He asked again.

 

“I- uh. A potions lab. The dungeons.” He blinked, quivered again. “Hogwarts.”

 

“Yes. Good. Do you recognise this lab specifically?”

 

“Uh. Maybe.”

 

“You shouldn’t, because we never used it in class. Do you know why that is?”

 

The boy’s forehead furrowed, turning his scar into a maze. “‘Cause I’m terrible at potions.”

 

Severus was struck with the sudden urge to laugh. “No, Potter. It’s because this lab is warded against all outside magic; inside, it’s essentially a muggle environment. Do you know why we’re here specifically?”

 

Potter didn’t reply to this, and so Severus was forced to do all the work by his goddamn self, as usual.

 

“It’s because you’ve given yourself severe magical exhaustion, and outside magic could react badly with your core. Do you know how this happened?”

 

Bugger. The boy was crying, and shaking again. This was getting repetitive.

 

And-- Oh, he’s screaming.

 

“No, I don’t bloody know! I don’t know what I did and I don’t know why I’m here or why _you’re_ here because the last time I checked we were both dead! You can stop speaking to me like an idiot, and guess what? I don't owe you _anything_! I never asked for you to ruin your life spying for Dumbledore and I never asked you to protect me.”

 

By the end of the sentence Potter was snarling and spitting, and his chest was heaving. He stopped shouting and subsided into a hateful hiss. "I don't owe you anything."

 

⁂

 

He absolutely would not stand for this. He’d thought the boy had grown out of this ridiculous, childish temper and this complete lack of respect during the war, but he was exactly the same child that had disregarded his privacy and refused to learn during his Occlumency lessons.

 

He could do as he liked, then, and Severus didn’t care. He could keel over and die of magical depletion, he could scream to all his heart’s content; Severus had done as he’d promised, and defended him until both of them were dead. Potter didn't owe him, and he didn't owe Potter.

 

His debt was paid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry but its the only reasonable reaction from either of them because they both suck at communication and they both have really awful emotional control 
> 
> im not sure if this flowed at all please say what did or didnt work cause im Paranoid now


	4. what of the deep?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry does a very stupid thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sarah williams providing those excellent top-notch epigraphs and titles once again

_there are no kindred like the kin of sorrow,_ _  
__there is no hope like theirs who fear no morrow._ _  
__  
__mariner, what of the deep?_ _  
__this of the deep:_ _  
__though we have travelled past the line of day,_ _  
___glory of night doth light us on our way.

  
  


Snape had left, in an excessively dramatic swirl of robes. Harry was impressed despite himself. It did, of course, mean that he’d got himself stranded in a room that he apparently couldn’t leave, in a body that hated him and that he hated right back, and with no explanation of why or how he was alive.

 

Typical.

 

And then, of course, as soon as he’d managed to work himself into a proper sulk the poor house elf who’d woken him up appeared once again, holding a tray of tea and pastries. No sulk can hold up to an earnest face and a tray of tea and pastries.

 

The elf herded him into a chair and faced him with an expectant look; Harry had no idea what it was that she expected, and so said nothing. Eventually she appeared to tire of him, and chirped that “Sirs should be telling us they be staying for the holidays!”

 

Harry’s complete lack of response stretched so long this time that the poor elf’s eyes began to crease at the corners, and her cheerful smile grew brittle. She huffed. “It is sometimes happening that a student cannot be at home. The elves be understanding, but they are needing warning in order to prepare quarters! Will Mister Harry Potter be staying in the guest quarters, or with Mister Professor Snape?”

 

A direct question managed to shock Harry into consciousness and he blurted “Wait-- it’s the holidays?”

 

The elf nodded, looking worried now. “It is the twentieth of July, sir. The students are going home last week, and the castle is being empty until Mister Professor Snape arrives this morning, sir, with you. Is sir alright?”

 

July. Bloody fucking hell. Either he’d been unconscious for several months, or--

 

Or Snape was trying to break something to him gently. Shit.

 

“S’cuse me, but uh. What year is this? Sorry, I um, I hit my head.”

 

The poor house elf now looked completely out of her depth.  “1991?”

 

Bloody fucking hell again.

 

Harry smiled wanly, and nodded, making an expression that he hoped indicated that this made perfect sense. The house elf waited a few seconds, before smiling the desperate smile of the confused beyond all understanding and disapparating.

 

Now _this_ was a plot development.

 

He hadn’t died; he wasn’t undead or somehow reanimated. He wasn’t the corpse-like lich that Tom Riddle had became. He’d just traveled back in time, somehow. He raised his hands to his face, feeling the points of his browbones and the indentation of his scar; the roundness was unfamiliar, but it was his face, still.

 

He buttered a piece of toast with more care than anyone had previously done so, staring at his stubby little fingers; he hadn’t even noticed that his hands had changed, but they had. On the back of his left hand, the skin stretched brown and unblemished; his terrible handwriting hadn’t been etched into it yet.

 

It might never be.

 

The thought struck him like a head rush: he could stop that happening. He could stop everything. The war was over, and it might never start in the first place. The power felt like the first time he’d held his holly wand, in Ollivanders, less than a year ago and a lifetime away.

 

Time turners had rules, but this wasn’t a time turner. There was no  _ him _ to avoid, here; he couldn’t avoid changing time. Just by being here, at this time, he’d already broken the timeline and no retribution had arrived to deal with him. He could do anything, save anyone--

 

Ginny.

 

It was the summer of 1991. The Chamber wasn’t open yet; Ginny had never been possessed. He could make sure she never was, prevent any petrifications, make sure this Ginny never had to deal with the guilt of it.

 

There was a basilisk in the school, right now where he stood, a monster capable of wholescale massacre underneath the girl’s bathroom.

 

⁂

 

The noise of the tiles moving was horrid, now he thought of it; ceramic shrieking at the friction and stone grinding together. He’d no idea how anyone had missed it the first time around, but he supposed people were sort of conditioned to ignore any odd noises coming out of girl’s bathrooms. The downside was, of course, that Moaning Myrtle came shooting out of her stall wailing at the racket, staring at him in terror as he smiled and jumped in.

 

⁂

 

The pipe was just as awful as before, possibly worse, slick and slimy with creeping damp and dew. It clung to his pajamas when he landed, green and black and disgusting; even a Scourgify didn’t remove the sick, bitter smell. The Elder Wand, clutched in his fist, was cold comfort. No matter how brave you are, no matter what you’ve faced, a pitch black tunnel and noise just muffled enough to be incomprehensible has some sort of visceral effect on the hindbrain, like ice water injected directly into the spine.

 

Harry strained to make out the distant sounds, muddled by the echoing cavern; they were indistinct, but vaguely aquatic, the sound of moving water and the scratching of small things moving on stone. His own footsteps seemed too loud.

 

Something moved in the gloom above his head.

 

The thing was leathery, or scaled, and thousands of dark eyes shone in the blackness. It moved like the surface of the Veil, whispering and roiling. Harry poured more power into his Lumos, trying to see the vaulted ceilings of the cavern, but this only set off a terrible screeching.

 

The darkness rolled, and expanded, and fell apart. He swung his wand wildly, trying to aim everywhere at once, and cast a Bombarda that fell upon the shrieking mass like a shockwave.

 

Harry stared in horror as the stone above his head shook.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> harry its a bat colony u fucking halfwit. you mad idiot. for fucks sake harry


	5. plague or no plague

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some sort of reconciliation occurs. also, Snape explains some things, and doesn't explain others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today's title and epigraph by the wonderful S. Osmond, on tumblr as AllTheSinkingShips; please read her poetry, it's wonderful.
> 
> listen. listen. its almost monday. im on schedule. i just wanted this up because im super busy tomorrow

 

> _ what i’m trying to say is _ _   
>  _ _ take your hand away from your goddamn _ _   
>  _ _ throat. unswallow the bullet that you _ _   
>  _ _ haven’t eaten yet but won’t spit out. _ _   
>  _ _   
>  _ _ plague or no plague, we are not dead _ _   
>  _ _ even though we could be. we are not dead _ _   
>  _ __ even though we wanted to be. - S. osmond

 

The vaults under the school reminded him unpleasantly of Malfoy Manor in the final days of the war; somewhere that had once been opulent, and had been broken by cruelty. Potter’s mad owl seemed to love it, crunching on an unfortunate bat on his shoulder.

 

Severus moved quickly, eventually giving up on trying to keep his steps quiet. The ghost had been hysterical, and hadn’t been able to tell him just what the child had been doing, just that he was ‘inside the sink! He hissed at it and it glowed and he jumped in, just typical, the first boy in my bathroom in forty years and he’s only interested in the plumbing--’ but Severus vaguely remembered this. There was that fiasco with the Chamber of Secrets, and Potter and Weasley had tried to kill themselves fighting a dragon or a basilisk or something. 

 

The only good thing to come out of that year was Granger shutting up for two months and that idiot Lockhart finally disposing of himself.

 

Potter was apparently attempting to repeat his mistake and get into a brawl with an excessively large reptile for the fourth time, which seemed excessive, even for the Boy-Who-Lived.

 

⁂

 

There was a section down the second fork of the tunnel that reeked of magic. It also reeked of bat guano, but mostly magic. It had seeped into the stone, here, and the quartz was almost glowing with it. It was too fresh and too bright to be an inherent part of the structure.

 

Clearly, Potter was attempting to die for the second time. And clearly the responsibility for making sure he didn’t was going to fall on Severus, despite his resolution to do nothing of the sort, because if the idiot died in the castle in the summer with only Severus around he would be accused of  murder, again, and there are only so many accusations of murder one can withstand and still keep one’s job.

 

⁂

 

Harry came back to consciousness slowly, awareness arriving in moments. His clothes were damp and cold and clinging to him, and the bed he was laid out on was stiff with starch. 

 

This time he had the presence of mind to notice where he was; the air was damp and stale enough that he must be back in the dungeons, and he could hear the crack and pop of caldron burners running somewhere to the left. Snape was brewing something, he presumed, from the strong smell of rosemary.

 

“The next time you do this, Potter, I will leave you there, and your empty magical core will rot inside of you, and you will die in agony.”

 

Snape spoke with a low, even tone that belied the fact that he clearly meant it. Harry opened his eyes and tried to sit up, moving gingerly because it was now horribly apparent that he had in fact done someting egregious to his body.

 

“Look, sir, it’s not like I  _ meant _ to--”

 

Snape cut him off. “What exactly  _ did _ you mean to do?”

 

“There’s a basilisk down there, if I can sort it out now Ginny won’t--”

 

“You were trying to fight a fucking basilisk with magical exhaustion and no backup of any kind?”

 

Harry had to admit that that sounded rather bad. 

 

“Sir?” he ventured, after a beat. “Why did you come and get me? I mean, after I shouted at you earlier.”

 

Snape sighed, and decanted some of the potion he was bent over into a mug. It was shoved under Harry’s nose with a muttered “Nutrient potion,” and Harry sipped it slowly as Snape collapsed into the Chesterfield in the corner - which seemed rather incongrous, considering the overall decor. It must have been dragged in so that Snape could sleep while Harry was out earlier, he realised with a pang of guilt.

 

Snape fixed him with a grimace, and said “Potter, I may have protected you partially out of a debt to your mother, but I am also your teacher. I have a duty of care. This has limits, however, and so does my patience. That limit appears to be your complete and utter lack of a self preservation instinct.”

 

Harry scrunched and un-scrunched the coverlet in his hands, waiting for a righteous anger that never arrived. He’d jumped in head-first without considering the consequences, once again, and if he was honest he was lucky he’d gotten out unscathed. Snape could be a little kinder about it, but he hadn’t said anything that was untrue or unreasonable.

 

“Sorry.” He almost whispered it, and when Snape didn’t react said it slightly too loud. “Sorry.”

 

Snape raised one eyebrow at him and smiled sardonically. “Sorry for what, Potter?”

 

“Sorry for overreacting earlier, and screaming at you. And sorry for going after the basilisk. It was reckless, and I should have thought beforehand. Thanks for getting me out of Chamber.”

 

Snape blinked in surprise, and gave a curt nod, apparently just as embarrassed by the situation as Harry was. He steepled his fingers, and tapped them together for a moment, inscrutable.

 

“I presume you’ve deduced the results of your outburst, then, and you’re aware of the date?”

 

“It’s the summer before my second year. We’ve gone back in time, but I don’t know how.”

 

“You did it yourself, Potter. How, I’m not quite sure, but it was while we were both in some form of limbo after death. Did you use much fully self-transfigurative magic before or during the battle?”

 

Harry stared blankly. “I’ve no idea what that means.”

 

Snape rolled his eyes. This made much more sense to Harry than their earlier almost-civility. “Did you achieve an animagus transformation, or by some means become incorporeal, or otherwise disconnect your magic from the physical shape of your body?”

 

Harry had no idea what that had to do with anything, but-- “I used Polyjuice a few times in the year before the battle.”

 

Snape cocked his head slightly, and his other eyebrow joined the first. “Repeated use of Polyjuice would do it, especially if-- You used it in second year, didn’t you?”

 

“Yes, but what’s that got to do with anything?”

 

“Magic like the Polyjuice potion disconnects one’s magic from one’s body in order to change it. Repeated use over a long period can weaken the link. I suspect that in your case the connection was weak enough, and your magic strong enough, that after death it became possible for you to throw your mind, but not your body, back in time.

 

“If you’ve done as I suspect, Potter, you may have given us both a great gift. If there is no alternate version of us, as I suspect there is not, then you have permanently altered the time stream, and we are free to act as we like. In essence, we can re-write our pasts.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still no dealing with the Dursleys, but the idiots aren't arguing anymore!! sort of. harry had, of course, assumed the whole time that he could change the timeline, and was proceeding accordingly, and does not want to admit that he's been a right idiot.
> 
> I fucking hate writing dialogue. i swear this all sounds so stilted.


	6. man hands on misery to man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the durseys are dealt with. other things are not dealt with. a reasonable attempt is made to deal with at least one other thing. both harry potter and severus snape feel an emotion. neither of them approve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title and epigraph from phillip larkin. thanks, phil, for the single most Relatable(tm) poem of all time.
> 
> this is longer than normal and i wont apologise.
> 
> 'mondays,' she said, not forseeing that she would have Ideas, and consequently update every two days.

>  
> 
> _ They fuck you up, your mum and dad.    _
> 
> _ They may not mean to, but they do.    _
> 
> _ They fill you with the faults they had _
> 
> _ And add some extra, just for you. _
> 
>  
> 
> _ Man hands on misery to man. _
> 
> _ It deepens like a coastal shelf. _
> 
> _ Get out as early as you can, _
> 
> _ And don’t have any kids yourself. _

 

The floo journey to Potter’s home was awful. Potter had gone ahead of him, and had flailed so madly that the flume was filled with smoke and coal-dust, and upon exiting Severus had to suffer through the indignity of a coughing fit.

 

This was still more elegant than the boy, who had managed to exit at an oblique angle and had, ridiculously, left coal-dust on the ceiling. With his wild hair, skinny frame, blackened skin and miserable expression, he was every inch the Dickensian urchin.

 

He looked particularly out of place in the immaculate sitting-room they found themselves in. The house was the sort that Severus’ mother had always coveted; immaculate and horrifically boring, the result of some suburban family attempting to outdo their neighbours. Without even looking outside, one was aware that this sitting-room was in every way indistinguishable from every other in the street.

 

The racket that Potter had made on entry must have alerted the inhabitants of the house to their presence, and a door was forced open by a man who looked like the sweaty offspring of Jabba the Hutt and a badly-fitting suit. He looked unpleasantly familiar, and after a moment Severus recognised him as Petunia’s husband; he had met the man very briefly when he’d visited to inform Petunia of Lily’s death, and disliked him immediately. An unpleasant thought arrived: he had visited almost two weeks after Lily’s death, at which time Petunia would already have taken guardianship of the boy, but there was no evidence of him.

 

Severus had assumed that Potter had been raised by relatives on his father’s side; he had to admit that having to live with Petunia and her distasteful associates would drive even him to madness.

 

The man was behaving particularly oddly now, quivering and turning a strange shade of purple. Thankfully, before he could actually explode, a boy slightly taller than Potter but three times as wide appeared from behind him and pulled him out of sight. The boy then stuck his head back 'round the door-frame and squeaked “I’ll fetch mum!”

 

Oh, dear. They’d multiplied.

 

A stringent “What?” echoed from another room, and Petunia appeared in front of him for the first time in eighteen years. Severus was pleased to note she looked it. It was a small victory, but he was always a slightly petty man.

 

Severus smiled, showing teeth, and bowed very slightly at the waist. Petunia appeared to nod politely entirely on reflex, and stopped as soon as she realised what she was doing. 

 

“You have my apologies for the sudden disappearance of your nephew, and for the stress it must have caused your family. There was an unforeseen magical accident that resulted in his teleporta--”

 

The man from before-- Vincent?-- was back in the doorway, and interrupted him at an awful volume. “We don’t want him in the house! The ungrateful freak threatened my son!”

 

Severus blinked at him in surprise and offence, and Petunia-- who had always clung to manners like a life-raft-- shushed her husband, and then stood shaking and pale, possibly attempting to stare him down but looking more like a shocked horse. At some point the Potter boy had edged almost behind him, and upon noticing his rounded shoulders and the stare he fixed on the ground another unpleasant notion snuck up on him. He was feeling sympathy for the boy, and he didn’t like it.

 

He tried another smile, even colder this time. The first was a snake; this was Smaug the Calamity. “Petunia, I’m sure you understand the necessity of--”

 

The awful woman interrupted him yet again, despite being as pale as paper and shaking as if from the cold.  “We don’t want the boy here, and he doesn’t want to be here either. Lily said you were to take the brat, so take him!”

 

Vincent or Victor or whoever appeared to be emboldened by his wife’s little speech, and returned to a terrible volume and bellowed, spittle flying, that “Freaks should stay with freaks!”

 

A turn, and the dizzy pressure of apparation, and both him and Potter were gone.

 

⁂

 

Harry had stiffened all over when Snape grabbed his shoulder, and at the feeling of apparation his heart had kicked into overdrive. Intellectually, he was aware that Snape wasn’t going to kidnap him, but a year on the run had left him with instincts he couldn’t shed. When they landed, he had to screw his eyes up tight and take deep breaths to stop himself from lashing out. Some kind of feeling, hot and quick like anger but heavy like shame, curled in his abdomen.

 

Snape’s hand convulsed on his shoulder for a moment, but it stayed there until Snape began to move, and Harry was surprisingly grateful for the steady pressure.

 

He’d taken them to a street in what looked like London; the skyline looked familiar. A rush of commuters exiting a tube station serving to disguise their arrival, and after a moment Snape set off at speed counter to the current of people. Harry, who had grown up in the suburbs and spent most of the past year in various forests, was completely out of his depth.

 

While Harry had been gawping at the scenery and struggling against a flow of people much taller than him, Snape had cast a Notice-Me-Not on the pair of them and pulled him into an alcove by a Pret-A-Manger to avoid being crushed. Harry attempted to apologise, but before he could open his mouth Snape cast some sort of glamour and they set off again.

 

Snape, ahead of him, looked surreal; the glamour had replaced his black robes with jeans, a bright yellow Sex Pistols shirt, and what Harry thought might be heeled boots. Snape in jeans alone was enough of an odd image; the shirt and boots catapulted the day straight into psychedelia. The coppery hair and softer, rounder face made it slightly easier to process.

 

Harry had another horrible lurching feeling when he noticed that not only were his hands far too small, they had lightened from a dark brown to a Weasley-pale, but reasoned that Snape must have glamoured him as well in order to avoid recognition.  The whole thing felt very covert.

 

He sped up slightly to walk apace with Snape, breathing hard at the exertion because his legs were very short and Snape walked very fast. “Sir,” he panted, “Where exactly are we going?”

 

Snape looked down at him in surprise, and said “Lunch. Neither of us have eaten a full meal in several hours.”

 

“I had some toast earlier, we don’t have to--”

 

Snape stopped almost dead, and Harry continued forward several steps before he noticed. He levelled a glare at him, furrowed a brow and snapped “Toast is not a meal!”

 

He ducked into a doorway on a corner, and the pair of them emerged into a sunlit restaurant, tiled in red mosaics and with a vaulted ceiling. Harry vaguely recognised Trafalgar Square outside, but the restaurant was an island of calm in the centre of the chaos. In a flurry they were seated, and Harry was shifting uncomfortably, out of place. 

 

“This is a restaurant attached to the National Gallery, if it wasn’t clear. It’s muggle enough that we won’t be recognised, and near enough to Diagon that our apparation signatures will be virtually untraceable. It also serves an excellent meal.”

 

Snape was gazing coolly at him, but the effect of his steepled fingers and thoughtful eyes was reduced by the coal dust still scattered across his face and the incongruity of his clothes. He made a noise, like a thoughtful ‘hmm’ but with all the curiosity surgically removed. A tap of his fingers threw up a ‘muffliato’ that settled like heavy snow over the room.

 

“Regardless of your aunt’s behaviour, you could not return there. The wards have collapsed, likely a result of your--” he made the humming noise again. “Accident.”

 

Harry grinned from ear to ear, a weight lifted or a binding curse removed. “I don’t have to go back?”

 

Snape frowned deeper, but Harry didn’t care a jot. “Must I repeat myself?”

 

He leaned back, looking at his hands like he was deep in thought, before returning his attention to Harry. “This may be a good thing. Perhaps it is not a  _ personal _ victory, but we have a great deal of work ahead of us, and I doubt Petunia would afford you the necessary freedom.”

 

This was very true indeed. It had been less bad, in the summer before he left for good, but he still remembered the bars on the window and the cat-flap they’d fed him through. He made the requisite noises of agreement, joining Snape in his scrutiny of the lacquered tabletop.

 

After a moment, during which he’d goggled at the reflection of two blonde white men looking familiar in the window when the reality was so different, Harry spoke up.

 

“You knew my Aunt Petunia when you were a kid, didn’t you?”

 

Snape smiled wryly, and Harry regretted asking. “I had the dubious honour. She made an equally unpleasant teenager.”

 

The silence stretched from there.

 

After a time that had crammed as many seconds into a minute as possible, a waiter arrived to free Harry from the prison he’d built himself. He was stunningly gorgeous, about Harry’s age, and Harry gave his order in a daze. It was only as he turned to leave that Harry realised that he couldn’t just ask for his number, or literally anything, because he wasn’t even five foot tall yet and he looked about eleven. It hit like the Knight Bus careening at full tilt, and Harry hated himself, and his magic, and Snape, and the hot waiter and everything around him with a stunning intensity for about two seconds

 

He figured it was best to look on the bright side. There was nothing he could do about the fact that his body fit him like one of Hagrid’s coats, but he could attempt to do something about the hellscape Britain had become during the war.

 

“You, uh, you want us to work together then?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some notes:
> 
> \- sev doesn't know he's covered in coal. harry does know he's covered in coal.   
> \- the restaurant just off the national gallery in Trafalgar exists, is just down the road from Charing Cross, and makes a mean espresso, and it's weirdly quiet for being in the middle of trafalgar  
> \- sev's 70s Kid Depressed Academic Dad outfit was inspired by my very own 70s Kid Depressed Academic Dad. i firmly believe this is a man who wears leather jackets with things painted on them in his free time.  
> \- harry is bisexual and indian and has adhd thanks for coming to my ted talk  
> \- sev: 'u gotta eat a meal. every day a new meal'  
>  harry: 'one toast a meal'  
>  sev: 


	7. with all your crooked heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> recollection; harry makes a plan, and loves his friends a lot; dumbledore worries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title and epigraph from W.H Auden. it's rather darker than the actual chapter, because I wound up removing bits that didn't work quite right; if it feels choppy, that might be why.

> _ All the clocks in the city _ _   
>  _ _   Began to whirr and chime: _ _   
>  _ _ ‘O let not Time deceive you, _ _   
>  _ _   You cannot conquer Time. _ _   
>  _ _   
>  _ _ ‘O plunge your hands in water, _ _   
>  _ _   Plunge them in up to the wrist; _ _   
>  _ _ Stare, stare in the basin _ _   
>  _ _   And wonder what you’ve missed. _ _   
>  _ _   
>  _ _ ‘O look, look in the mirror, _ _   
>  _ _   O look in your distress: _ _   
>  _ _ Life remains a blessing _ _   
>  _ _   Although you cannot bless. _ _   
>  _ _   
>  _ _ ‘O stand, stand at the window _ _   
>  _ _   As the tears scald and start; _ _   
>  _ _ You shall love your crooked neighbour _ _   
>  _ _   With all your crooked heart.' _ _   
>  _ _   
>  _ _ It was late, late in the evening, _ _   
>  _ _   The lovers they were gone; _ _   
>  _ _ The clocks had ceased their chiming, _ _   
>  _ __   And the deep river ran on.

 

Severus returned to his quarters deep in thought. The problem of guardianship weighed heavily on his mind; if Petunia had spoken truly, and Lily had for some reason left it to him, that would resolve the idea of where to leave the boy, but he was worried that Potter might need some form of actual parental presence.

 

The trip to Privet Drive had created more problems than he had foreseen. Their belligerence to the boy, how he had stood behind him as though taking refuge, the insistence that they didn’t want him there; the whole thing had been concerning. He had believed that the boy was raised by some Potter cousin, and had allowed that and a personal dislike to override his duty to the child. He’d spoken truly earlier; he had a debt to Lily, but he also had a duty as Potter’s professor, and he appeared to have neglected it.

 

If Potter had experienced any form of abuse at the hands of Petunia, as he strongly suspected he had, then he would require a careful and attentive, possibly affectionate, guardianship, and Severus doubted his ability to provide such.

 

There was no point, of course, on dwelling on the possibility; if he was to have guardianship, they would find out shortly from a visit to Lily’s lawyer and he would cope as best he could, and if he was not to, then the problem would resolve itself.

 

His upcoming visit to Woodrow and Sons. was the boy’s idea. Severus had been pleasantly surprised by his practical approach to the issue; while their conversation clearly avoided topics of consequence, Potter had addressed the issue of his guardianship with a practical cheerfulness that, while potentially obnoxious, boded well for their ability to collaborate.

 

That cheerful practicality had disappeared when they returned to Hogwarts and the conversation turned to the matter of how to dispose of the Dark Lord.

 

Horcruxes.

 

Severus had dabbled in dark magic, he was unashamed to admit it, but he couldn’t fathom the idea of a horcrux. The initial murder hardly troubled him, but to split one’s soul, to rend one’s being -- and multiple times!

 

There was one in Hogwarts, apparently, in a room Severus had no knowledge of but that he was assured existed. They had agreed that they were to leave it in situ before a disposal method could be found- Potter had detailed the effects of carrying one on one’s psyche long enough to make Severus agree.

 

Potter had explained the entirety of his quest to destroy them - and an illiadic quest it appeared to be! There was a dragon and a mythical sword, for goodness’ sake. The whole thing was hyperbolic. He’d listed everything that would improve their chances-- Perhaps Severus should have mentioned-- no. He could sort that out on his own; Potter would just complicate the situation further.

 

The horcrux in the ‘room of requirement’ was part of the reason they were still there. It was agreed that as long as the boy’s custody was dubious, they would remain at the school; the House-Elves had indicated that it would not be suspicious, and no other teachers should be present until a few days before term started again. There was no room in Spinner’s End for the child, and here they could access the library and monitor the horcrux and that damned basilisk. If Severus was honest, he would rather be at Hogwarts than anywhere, and had not argued overmuch.

 

It was, of course, wonderful to be at Hogwarts as it was, but it was odd to be returned to the suite of rooms in the dungeons; he’d almost become accustomed to the rooms in the Headmaster’s Tower, and of course those must now belong to Albus -- who was still alive, yet chairing the Wizengamot and not yet cursed.

 

The whole thing felt like a fever-dream.

 

He collapsed into the chair behind his desk, giving out a deep sigh and scuffing his hands up his face. They came away darkened with dust, and he blinked before breaking into silent, shoulder-shaking laughter. He’d been walking around all day blackened with the coal dust. It was a wonder the restaurant had seated them.

 

The light in the Great Hall when they’d arrived had indicated noon, and they’d spent no more than three hours plotting and keying the boy into the wards of the guest rooms, so it couldn’t be later than four in the afternoon. Regardless, he was exhausted, a tiredness that weighed down his limbs and seeped cold and numbing into his brain.

 

He thought to find some work or entertainment, but discarded the notion, and tumbled gladly into bed with no thought for the sun as yet high in the sky.

 

⁂

 

Harry stood alone in an unfamiliar room and laughed giddily.

 

The suite in the North Tower was clearly designed for visiting politicans and the like, and despite the poor elves’ efforts it was clearly worn with disuse and stale from lack of air. The decor was carefully impersonal, upholsered in white with pale woods to avoid even a house affiliation, and every piece of furniture was about a foot too tall for him. It was expansive in a palatial, ridiculous way, to communicate rather than comfort; it resembled everything wrong with the current political climate, everything wrong with the society he found himself in, and he loved it, because for once in his life it was his. 

 

Temporarily, but he didn’t care.

 

The dorms had belonged to everyone, the Burrow to Ron, the tent to Hermione and Grimmauld Place to the past, but this ridiculous dusty white set of rooms was his, and if he wanted to jump on the beds he could.

 

It was a heady feeling, and on top of the day’s surrealness he felt like he was suspended in some drug-induced dream, or some sort of illusion. He was floating.

The future, and his past, were his to take and to keep and shape as he wished. 

 

He took advantage of the fact that he was apparently eleven, and threw himself up onto the four-poster and jumped on a bed for the first time in his life. As a first experience, it wasn’t incredible, because it sent up a great choking cloud of dust, but he enjoyed it immensely regardless. As he settled into the duvet, laughing despite his coughs, he remembered the oddity that was the day he’d had.

 

The debacle with his aunt and uncle was expected; what was not was Snape’s reaction. He could swear he’d seen some sympathy as they left, and while discussing who was to have custody of him (he hated the idea, but unfortunately it was necessary--) Snape had been almost kind. If his aunt was right, then Snape could take guardianship; it was a deeply strange idea. Three days ago and seven years away he would have slit his throat at the idea, but things had changed so quickly that he felt his entire being was in limbo. 

 

Snape would treat him as an adult; perhaps not an adult he liked, but as an adult regardless. Remaining with him would allow him the freedom to act as he needed to, and more importantly, he could stay at Hogwarts; Snape had no room wherever he lived, and the house-elves had indicated they could stay as long as they wanted. If it weren’t for Snape, it would be ideal.

 

Actually, Snape had been almost co-operative, not nearly as antagonistic as it would have been a week ago. It seemed some sort of accord had been reached that was a little deeper than ‘we have to work together so let’s try not to kill each other.’ He vaguely wondered who he’d be, if Snape had found him on his doorstep. Taller, probably, he thought wryly. 

 

What an odd thought.

 

Regardless of who had custody, Snape or someone else, the wards had fallen; he wouldn’t have to go back to the Dursleys. That alone was reason to celebrate.

 

Unfortunately, no matter how happy he was, it was four in the afternoon and he had very little to do; his books, his broom, everything was still at the Dursleys, he couldn’t use the library, and it was far too early to sleep. He presumed that they’d pick up his things from the Dursleys at some point, if they didn’t burn his things, but he was worried about Hedwig. Snape had gone to bed - dealing with the castle wards seemed to take a lot out of him - and he couldn’t wake him up just to retrieve a bird, but he didn’t trust Vernon not to do something awful.

 

He was almost considering borrowing a castle broom and flying to Surrey himself when Hedwig arrived, saving him from what would have been a disaster- and Hedwig brought with her a form of entertainment.

 

She was weighed down with a heavy bundle of paper and parchment, and dragged behind her Errol, who looked incredibly put out. Harry fought his way out of the tangle of blankets and lurched to the window.

 

“Oh, you gorgeous bird,” he murmured, swinging the sash open. “I bet you’ve been so confused, what with me disappearing and reappearing everywhere.” Hedwig looked at him coolly, as if to say that she’d never been confused in her life, and how dare Harry suggest she was anything less than omniscient. Harry wouldn’t be surprised if she knew more of the future than he did. Errol, in contrast, was hanging off the window-ledge at a forty-five degree angle, on the brink of falling several stories.

 

Errol could be forgiven, of course, because he presumably was carrying a letter from Ron.

 

⁂

 

Harry took his haul out onto the balcony, basking in the view of Hogwarts laid out below him. He’d never seen it in the summer, and the Black Lake glowed golden in the sunlight; the forest, sprawling like a blanket out towards the mountains in the north, was almost inviting.

 

Everything was wonderful, because he had Hogwarts, and a thick envelope from Hermione and a roll of parchment from Ron and even a letter from Neville. 

 

Hermione’s was characteristic-- “ _ Hedwig turned up at my house this morning and I suppose she wants a letter, because she threw a pen at me--” “--Ron and I have been ever so worried that you didn’t reply, so I hope you reply to this, because otherwise we’ll have to assume you’re dead and auction off your Nimbus 2000--” “--I hope you’ve started your summer homework, you’ll regret it if you don’t--” _ and all the more pleasing for it. This was pure, distilled, 1991 Hermione, scared and playing it off as anger, worry seeping out of the edges in bluster, and Harry had never loved her more.

 

Ron’s was much the same in terms of content--  _ “Mate, I’m getting properly worried now, I know you don’t like to talk about your relatives and I can’t stop thinking of the worst, so I swear if you don’t reply to this one I will just turn up and fight your uncle--”  _ Ok, he hadn’t said that, but that was clearly the message he was supposed to receive--  _ “Mum says you’re welcome to come visit whenever, and she want to know if you’re doing anything for your birthday, because she has a cake recipe she’d like to try, so please come visit ‘cause it sounds fab.”  _ God, Harry had missed when ‘were you kidnapped’ was a joke. It was lovely, too, to see that they’d kept writing in the vague hope he would still get them, even though he wasn’t replying; intellectually he knew they were going to stick with him whatever, but sometimes he had trouble believing it. Fifth-year summer had done some damage, even if neither of them meant to.

 

Neville’s was-- surprising, actually.  He’d never been invited to a birthday party before, and certainly not so apologetically. He wished he’d got it the first time around. He resolved to get to know Neville better this time; see if he could bring his courage forward a bit, without it being forced to to fore by running various illegal operations against a corrupt government.

 

⁂

 

Harry had scrounged up a roll of parchment and some old self-inking quills in the suite’s desk, and drafted a set of responses to be sent out in the morning-- “ _ I’m fine, there was an issue with the wards that blocked letters, I’m not with the Dursleys anymore and it’s fucking incredible--” “--How are Fred and George, how isn’t Percy, tell Ginny they’re lying about the troll, I hope she’s excited for Hogwarts--” “--I’d be bloody delighted to come, and it’s great to hear from you, anything interesting happening in your greenhouse?--” “--actually, ‘Mione, all my homework is still at Privet Drive, isn’t it such a shame I won’t be able to finish it ever (actually, if you could tell me what it was, that’d be great.)” _

 

It was only as he was actually headed to bed, in pajamas transfigured from some spare bed linen, that he remembered about Sirius, and a fourth letter was scrawled out, this time with much more care:

 

“ _ Dear Remus Lupin, _

_ I understand you were good friends with my father...” _

 

This was something he probably couldn’t rely on Snape to help with. He could sort it out himself; Snape sticking his nose in would only complicate things.

 

⁂

 

Albus stood on the pavement outside Number Five, Privet Drive in a very quiet panic.

 

The night was cold, a frost settling as he watched, and he was reminded very forcefully of the last time he’d been here. It was cold, then, colder, the end of October, but then he’d been jubilant, and hadn’t registered the cold. Now, older but not by much, he felt it cut to the quick.

 

The wards lay in tatters. Magic lay about the street like a bomb had gone off; it had soaked into the streets and flowers in Number Four’s garden were turning improbable colours, but inside the circle he’d cast ten years ago there was nothing. 

 

Albus clutched an unfamiliar wand as if ready to attack; it was too short, too weak, but it was his once and it would have to do. The elder wand was gone; the boy missing; Voldemort had come close to resurrection, and Gellert was too quiet in Nuremgard; he could not afford weakness now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something Is Happening
> 
> someone please guess im Hinting 
> 
> wow this was longer than usual you're welcome


	8. there was once a slaughter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ?
> 
> mood whiplash i guess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title and epigraph from Danez Smith's 'little prayer.'

 

> _let ruin end here_ _  
> __  
> __let him find honey_ _  
> _ _where there was once a slaughter_ _  
> __  
> __let him enter the lion’s cage_ _  
> _ _& find a field of lilacs_ _  
> __  
> __let this be the healing_ _  
> _ __& if not;   let it be

 

Severus woke in a tangle of sheets, shivering. The dungeons got cold at night, the stone sometimes dropping below zero in winter, and even in the middle of summer he needed blankets, but he’d forgotten that in his rush to bed; he’d become accustomed to the warmth of the Headmaster’s quarters. It wouldn’t do much good if he had remembered; he’d thrashed in the night and thrown the covers up.

 

He couldn’t remember any dream, but there must have been one; something dark dogged his thoughts.  He was curled with his arms over his head, like he was hiding, and had he not opened his eyes centimetres away from his left forearm he’d have missed it.

 

The Mark was grey and faded, which was as he remembered for this time, but on the hard black outline the ink had spread. The line was still clear, but it blurred very slightly, throwing out dye into the surrounding skin. It looked less like a brand and more like a simple bad tattoo; the magic was supposed to keep it clear, because while it was done with a needle, it was more magic than skin. That appeared to have changed. 

 

Another tattoo -- more professionally done than the Dark Mark, though no less shameful -- had begun to do the same thing after a year or two, fading about the edges, but it was so simple the design wasn’t affected. He was struck by a sudden horrible notion, and it wouldn’t abate until he checked-- but the skin on his chest was unmarked, scarred and pale with blue veins, but unbranded. The weight on his sternum was gone, at least for the moment.

 

Somewhere above him the clock in the Great Hall chimed nine; he must’ve slept for far too long. His head ached as though he hadn’t slept at at all.

 

⁂

 

Harry had found someone’s lost watch in a drawer, and now regretted doing so, because it was making a horrible buzzing noise while he was trying to sleep. To be fair, he had told it to do so, but he hated it regardless. 

 

A vaguely-directed burst of magic put a stop to it, and Harry was amused to see that the second hand spun wildly when he put it on. It was probably broken now, but it had a lovely black-and-gold face, and he figured repairing it would waste some time.

 

⁂

 

He wasn’t quite sure why, but he’d half expected the Great Hall to be full of students and breakfast. It was surreal to see it empty; the dining-tables had gone and the hearth-fire behind the staff table was out. Dumbledore’s lectern was still there, and the bird turned it’s head to look at him; he supposed the poor thing must not see anyone during the summer.

 

The sky in the vaultings was grey and stormy, and he had to squint in the low light to see the shifting gems in the hourglasses as they moved. Gryffindor’s- still almost full from last term- was in a flurry of activity, the rubies in the lower bulb turning and flowing like a bowl of water being stirred. As he watched, one tumbled free, hitting the bottom of the glass and sending ripples across the surface. The whole structure hummed, like a very quiet chime.

 

As if summoned by the toll, a voice piped up from behind him. “Sir should be eating breakfast!”

 

The house elf from earlier stood behind him, hands behind her back and smiling, head tilted. Harry grinned. 

 

“Actually, I was wondering where I could find some breakfast! Am I allowed to use the kitchens?”

The elf blinked at him. “Sandy be supposing Mister Harry Potter may use the kitchens if he likes, but Mister Harry Potter should eat the breakfast that has been served for him in the solarium!” She crossed her bony arms and fixed him with a frown. “Sir should not be wasting food!”

 

Harry couldn’t help a delighted laugh. “Sandy, I wouldn’t dare,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “Where exactly is this solarium?”

 

⁂

 

Severus arrived to breakfast in a towering temper, blinking back a headache at the bright light in the solarium. He figured it would be served there; they sometimes hosted small suppers there, and with only two humans in the castle pulling out a dining table would be ridiculous. It made sense, of course, but he was still annoyed that he had to spend time in a room so open to the pale, bright sky. It was an entirely decorative room atop the Ravenclaw tower, glass on every side to catch the light and a filigree’d greenhouse roof, and while it was gorgeous it was also on the verge of giving him a migraine.

 

This may have contributed to the tone in which he’d snapped “We have a problem.” 

 

Potter, mouth full, stared up at him with the expression of a very small mammal faced with the sudden appearance of a very large mammal, and frantically tried to swallow. He inevitably broke into a coughing fit, and Severus kept his face very still as he tried not to look either sheepish or amused. Something dawned on him.

 

“Potter, why are you still wearing your pajamas?”

 

The boy cocked his head at him, and said as though it should be obvious, “I don’t have any clothes. We left them at the Dursleys.”

 

Of course. “We shall retrieve your things from Privet Drive today, then.”

 

The boy looked unreasonably relieved. “Honestly, they’ve probably burnt them by now.”

 

Another point in the column of Severus Has Failed As A Teacher. That sort of sardonic humour could only come from genuinely believing it to be a possibility. 

 

Before Severus could descend any further into a pit of despair, Potter’s mad owl arrived, accompanied by Weasley’s mad owl and a mad owl that he vaguely recognised. He wasn’t sure why he knew that this owl was just as bloody-minded and violent as the others, but he knew.

 

His ear still stung from when that bloody bird had dragged him into the Chamber of Secrets.

 

Nobody was to find out about that incident as long as he lived.

 

Potter set about devouring his correspondence with the same intensity he’d devoured his breakfast, entirely distracted.

 

Severus slowly ate a bowl of fruit and looked out over the sunlit grounds, fingers absently tapping against  the dip at the centre of his collarbone. He became aware of what he was doing, and drew his hand away as though it had been burnt. 

 

A plume of smoke began to rise near the treeline of the forest, and he vaguely decided they ought to inform Hagrid of their presence; he was bound to notice the lights in the castle eventually, and it could do Potter some good to have someone to talk to in person, even if they couldn’t tell him everything.

 

It was a damn good thing that the boy had an existing support network; if he was to try and help him with the after-effects of what he was beginning to suspect had been an even worse childhood than his, he wouldn’t be able to do it alone, on account of how he was just god-awful at talking about emotions of any kind.

 

“Sir?”

 

Severus shook himself awake, and hummed an acknowledgement.

 

“I’ve written to some of my friends and I’d quite like to visit them -- Neville has a party soon and Mrs. Weasley’s been worried about how I was doing at the Dursleys.” The statement sounded like a question, and Severus could come up with no explanation of why it’d been said. 

 

He realised he’d been staring blankly for several seconds, and blinked. “You may use my floo, if you like, or I’m sure you can apparate yourself; the wards only extend as far as the gate.”

 

The boy perked up, looking even more obscenely happy, and Severus narrowed his eyes. Why was Potter seeking permission from  _ him? _

 

⁂

 

Harry glided lazily out to the gate, sidesaddle on a borrowed school broom with his feet dangling in the air. He’d found a set of Quidditch boots in the gear rooms and managed to charm them to his approximate size, and found himself completely uncaring of how much Petunia would detest his boots-pajamas-coak ensemble. He tousled his hair into even greater madness to spite her.

 

He’d expected that Snape would accompany him to the Dursleys, for some reason, but he’d headed off to talk to Hagrid; Harry had entirely forgotten that he lived at the castle over the summer, but he supposed someone had to look after the Forest. He had to steel himself to go alone, promising himself it’d be the last time he spent a second in Little Whinging.

 

He felt the shuddery, hot-air sensation of crossing the wards far too soon for his liking, and kicked the broom down, leaping before it reached the ground for the second or two of free-fall. He turned back to the castle for a moment, dark against the blue sky as it towered above him, and spun into the dizzy dislocation of Apparation.

 

⁂

 

Harry came back to reality in the Dursley’s garden, not wanting to face any of Dudley’s neighbours he might see on the street. This masterful tactical manoeuvre failed to account for Dudley himself, who gaped at him from the conservatory. He rushed to the door, but he opened it before he could marshal any kind of insult, so Harry just pushed past him into the house. 

 

It was a good thing that the Dursleys had kept his things in the cupboard under the stairs, because he didn’t think he could manage too long in this house. His eyes were hot and wet with tears he couldn’t quite explain, and he felt like he actually was eleven for a long moment. 

 

He found his cloak and trunk under a blanket, hidden, and smiled weakly.

 

“Harry!” Dudley’s voice came from the landing. Harry carefully didn’t look.

 

“You left this in your room.” Dudley said it so quietly that Harry had to see, and found that Dudley was holding his holly wand, outstretched in his fist. It was whole and unbroken, and Harry had almost forgotten it existed.

 

“Not my room anymore, Big D,” He said, unable to suppress a water grin.

 

Harry dragged his trunk back out to the back door, and waved vaguely in Dudley’s direction before he left. Dudley opened his mouth, and closed it again, and Harry found that he didn’t give a damn what he was going to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i genuinely don't know how to feel about this chapter
> 
> am i Plot Hinting too weakly? no-one's picked up on anything :(


	9. the whole sad thing might end

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> u know how i put 'mood whiplash' for the last chapter?
> 
> yeah.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to Danez Smith, again, whose poems are all brilliant.
> 
> me, twenty-five days ago: im going to write a short, quiet fic about personal healing  
> me, now: murder.

 

>  
> 
> _you have all you need to be a hero;_ _  
> __don’t save the world, save yourself_ _  
> _ _  
> __you worship too much & you worship too much_ _  
> _ _  
> __when prayer doesn’t work:      dance, fly, fire_ _  
> _ _  
> __this is your hardest scene_ _  
> __when you think the whole sad thing might end_ _  
> _ _  
> __but you live      oh, you live_ _  
> _ __  
> everyday you wake you raise the dead
> 
>  

Harry had to drag his trunk to the edge of the wards before he could shrink them, still paranoid of the Trace. It occurred to him that if he’d encountered Vernon, he might not have been able to defend himself for fear of the Ministry; it was a cold and unpleasant prospect.

 

He brought the broom up above the treetops, idling as he basked in the sunlight. Somewhere above him, on the hill from the castle, he saw Snape’s black silhouette making its way down to the grounds, and he leaned into the curve and came up to meet him; the cheap borrowed broom almost spun out of his control on the descent, but he righted it sheepishly.

 

“How was your family?”

 

Harry had no idea how to respond to that, and spun the broom on its axis to convey this. “No problems.” He wasn’t sure whether this was a lie or not. Snape appeared to be aware of this, and gave him an odd, squinty look of suspicion.

 

“I’m visiting Hagrid in order to inform him of our occupation of the castle. While it’s wise to keep our location secret, I doubt he’s quite thick enough to miss the lights on.”

 

⁂

 

Hagrid appeared to hear their footsteps, and “Door’s open, Firenze!” boomed through the window.

 

Harry stuck his head through the doorway, still perched on his broom, and grinned. “Expecting centaurs round for lunch, Hagrid?”

 

Hagrid lurched out of the pantry, knocking over a vase and setting Fang to yowling. “Harry? Not that I’m not glad t’ see you, lad, but you’re not-- _Severus_?”

 

His open-mouthed incredulity was more amusing than it had any right to be.

 

Snape maneuvered his way into the crowded hut around Harry, stepping over the broom with exaggerated care. “Good morning, Hagrid,” he said, long fingers drumming the notch at the base of his neck. “We thought you might like to know that you’ve got company at the castle for the summer.”

 

“Beg pardon?”

 

“Mister Potter’s previous living situation has become...” He made the contemplative humming noise, choosing a diplomatic word. “Untenable, and I found myself unexpectedly acquiring custody. With the blood wards gone, Hogwarts in the safest place for him.”

 

Hagrid collapsed into a chair, prompting Fang to leap for his face. “Reckon that makes some sense,” he said thoughtfully. “I never liked those muggles o’ yours. Be nice t’ have a human or two to talk to. Why don’t the pair of you stay for lunch then, ‘cause it looks like Firenze ain’t coming.”

 

Harry thought that sounded grand, and surprisingly Snape didn’t find an excuse to leave. Hagrid seemed unreasonably happy to have them there, and Harry felt a pang of sympathy for him; the castle must get awfully lonely over the summer. He disappeared back into the pantry to knock up some sandwiches, and Harry lowered his voice and leaned over.

 

“Did you get custody officially, then?” he asked, and Snape passed him a letter on thick, soft paper.

 

“Woodrow replied this morning; there’s some paperwork, but that shouldn’t take too long to sort out. Lily’s will was apparently listed Black, one of the mad Longbottoms, and me; it was a fairly short process of elimination.”

 

“What was the problem then?”

 

Snape looked at him quizzically.

 

“At breakfast. You said we’ve got a problem.”

 

Snape carefully leaned back, making for a less suspicious posture. “Later.”

 

Hagrid bustled back out, breaking the quiet. “If you’re t’ be staying here, would you mind keeping an eye on the border of the forest for me? For about a week the critters in there have been acting real strange, and I’m worried that some animals might be coming onto the grounds.”

 

“Is that why you were going to have lunch with Firenze?”

 

“Yeah, he’s not so hostile to wizards so-- wait, how do you know Firenze?”

 

Harry scrambled for an explanation. He felt like a skipping record for a moment before finding one: “You remember that detention last year when we saw Tom and that unicorn? I met him then.”

“Tom? That thing that was killing unicorns was named _Tom?_ ”

 

Harry saw Snape attempting to chew on a biscuit in the corner of his eye. He was impressively persistent.

 

“Uh, yeah. You-kn--” He caught himself. Fear of the Taboo hadn’t silenced him, then.  “Voldemort’s real name is Tom Riddle.”

 

Both Hagrid and Snape froze, Snape in the process of trying to weaken the biscuit with tea.

 

“I went to _school_ with ‘im!” Hagrid bellowed, and Harry remembered Tom’s smile in the diary, how he’d rejoiced at getting Hagrid expelled.

 

Snape, no less forcefully, muttered a “Bloody fucking hell,” into his cup of tea, and put it down looking pale.

 

The rest of the meal was spent by Harry’s recounting of Riddle’s life, Snape listening intently and Hagrid growing progressively more gleefully vindicated.

 

⁂

 

Harry sat by the lake, deep in thought. Hogwarts alone was surreal; this spot under the oak was usually swarming with people, but now that it was empty it was gorgeous. The lake stretched before him, blue-black and yet still shimmering; it leached cold, still icy even in the warm summer afternoon. He picked up a pebble, black and flecked with gold, polished smooth by time, and turned it in his hand; once, twice, three times. Mist was rising over the forest as night fell, and in the fading light it shone like spectres.

 

He saw Snape-- Severus, in his memory, pale and drawn and breathing like he couldn’t quite catch his breath. He was so pale that the mark had stood out unnaturally. It had been  so strange to see it in the sun, for Severus to draw back his sleeves in the light of day; he’d looked for the blurred edges, but mostly his mind was occupied with the oddity of seeing it so close.

 

When the explanation was done, Severus had cradled his arm close to his body as though the mark was a wound, and Harry thought it might as well be. He had very carefully not mentioned the other possible consequence; if it were not dead as he hoped it was, then Tom would be able to see the shape of it’s distortion, and Harry had done his research; Severus could die of it. Perhaps that was why he shook.

 

It was deeply strange to call him ‘Severus,’ but he was right, it would be odd not to, and the case of his custody was on shaky enough ground. It was stranger for him to call him ‘Harry,’ and he seemed to think so; he had asked, half joking, if Harry was not short for something, and if there was some version of his name that was less inane. Harry didn’t know, and wondered if he might have been a Hadrian or a Harold or a Henry his whole life and not known. He hadn’t said that; he’d only replied that if Severus continued to speak so ill of his name then he would call him Sev.

 

Of course, Severus had to ruin the joke by taking a deep breath and looking even paler and replying after a moment that Lily had called him Sev. The thought was miserable in ways he couldn’t quite articulate, and nothing more was said.

 

It was this state of misery that Harry noticed it.

 

Were he not searching so desperately for a distraction, he would have missed it. This is what he noticed:

 

The hour hand on his borrowed watch stayed still.

 

He moved his arm left and right, even took it off and rotated the clock face by itself, but the hand stayed fixed in one direction- pointing straight at Hogwarts, out over the water. He remembered how he’d broken it- a burst of magic, used foolishly to turn off the alarm- and was struck by a notion.

 

He concentrated on the feel of his magic, pooled it in his left hand as though he was about to cast a spell, and watched the hand swing round unerringly.

 

He’d created some sort of induced magnet, except for magic. He remembered very little of muggle science, but he remembered you could turn metal into a sort of temporary magnet, aligning electrons or something - that appeared to be what he’d done here.

 

He let the magic in his hand disappitate into the sand, and then when it fell through his fingers it fell towards the castle.

 

⁂

 

Severus sunk into the stone, leaching magic from the castle until the wards hung in the air before him like glowing filaments. He felt rather than saw them, swimming in meditation. With careful concentration he unlatched the magic, leaving spells hanging aimlessly in the air; he clouded the sensors, filled them with cotton where they should be watchful, and unknitted the strings of the protection, leaving them unharmed but useless; there would be no record that he was there. In a final piece of protection, he veiled the portraits, ensuring they would remain asleep.

 

He fought his way back to wakefulness, noting with surprise that the sun had gone down while he wasn’t looking, before he had to press his eyes closed to fight off a headache. He felt dizzy, and lightheaded in a way that reminded him of being seventeen and skipping meals to study.

 

He continued anyway, pushing open the door and carefully not being knocked off-balance by the unfamiliarity of his-- Dumbledore’s office.

 

God, this place was a disaster. It looked like a gold-leaf truck had exploded in the middle of a flea market.

 

He picked his way around the side-tables and trestles and pedestals that littered the floor, making his way to the back of the room, and poked the Hat on its brim. It startled, knocking itself off the shelf with it’s flail, and Severus caught it and raised it to eye-level.

 

“I need the Sword of Gryffindor.”

 

It looked more offended than a piece of antique millinery had any right to. “What? No! How did you even find out about that?” it blustered, meeting a chilly glare in response.

 

“Do I look like I want it for myself? I don’t _want_ it, but I do need it. There’s a basilisk under the school, and only goblin-made steel will withstand the venom without corroding.”

 

The Hat looked mutinous. “Why’d you got to kill him? He’s not doing anything. Leave him there, he isn’t hurting anybody. He’s _napping_.”

 

Severus wondered at the familiar tone, but realised that the Hat and the basilisk must’ve both been there since the Founders. No matter; lives were at stake. “If we don’t remove the basilisk,” he explained, “Eight students will be petrified. I know this. If peaceful resolution is possible, we will seek it, but it may not be an option, and I refuse to go without any defence.”

 

The Hat brought its point back, in a move reminiscent of McGonagal raising her eyebrows in shock. It was unclear whether it was prompted by his words or his complete conviction. “That’s fair reason, I suppose.”

 

Of course, the Hat had been created by Gryffindor, and as such when he released the sword it landed on his foot.

 

He hobbled to the door, the sword disappearing into the folds of his robes, and shot a glare at the recalcitrant Hat- who was of course already asleep.

 

He shut the door behind him softly, and leaned on it as he slipped back into the magic of the castle. Repairing the wards was a simpler procedure than unlatching them, but he felt like he was underwater when he resurfaced; his ears swum with static and his vision blurred. His fingers on his wand were cold, and when he tried to take a step forward his legs gave out before him. He didn’t feel it when he hit the stone.

 

⁂

 

Grindlewald’s first thought was that Albus was getting old. He was lined with laughter, but looked grim; his signature gaudy robes only served to highlight his paleness, and the circles under his eyes. His red hair had bleached white, and with it his fire had left.

 

The guards that flanked him melted back, and he stepped up close to the glass, cocking his head and smiling to unnerve.

 

Albus stared at a point behind his left ear. “What did you do, Gellert?” he almost whispered, raspy.

 

Grindlewald smiled. He touched his fingertips to his collarbone for a moment, folding his hands. “You’ve made me curious, now,” he said, at the same volume but so smooth it was almost a hum. “What could possibly have happened in England to make you come and visit me after all these years?”

 

Albus stepped up close to the glass, not not a foot away from Grindlewald, and he ached with the desire to break that crooked nose again.

 

“It couldn’t have been anyone else, old friend. I don’t know _how,_ but I know it was you.”

 

He laid his hands flat on the glass between them and looked mockingly at Albus, faux-concerned. He didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but he’d die before he let on.

 

He went for the throat. “I don’t know if we’re quite at the point where you can call me ‘old friend’ yet, Professor. After all, it’s not quite true, is it?”

 

The noise of the wind, never quite silent here, picked up. It was deafening, and he couldn’t tell if Albus was swaying or if the whole tower was. He remained stoic, smiling merrily all the while, as a bolt of icy lightning brightened the room as if by daylight. Ice formed on the window; Albus looked at him, sad and silent, and Gellert was suddenly twenty again, in love and miserable. He shivered, and Albus quaked.

 

Albus’ blue eyes shone, and Gellert thought for a moment he was crying.  He wasn’t. He spoke again, thin and reedy and weak: “Give it back.” Gellert thought madly of the wand, of how Albus had clung to it ever since he’d stolen it, how he held no wand now-- he gasped, as though he couldn’t find the air, as though he couldn’t breathe, and for a moment his eyes rolled back. “Give it back, I--”

 

Gellert was scared now, and wished like hell that he wasn’t.

 

Albus’ mouth moved for a moment, as though he was trying to speak, and Gellert saw his name on his lips. Before he could say a word, he grew even paler, his eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled -- not dramatically, but quietly, a tree falling alone in a forest, an old man dying.

 

⁂

 

A guard kicked in the door eventually, and found him in a pile of shattered glass on the floor, blood drying on the tiles and the wind roaring through a doorway onto a two hundred metre drop.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)
> 
> i want to make it clear that he's not like. dead. yet


	10. always with blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AHAHAH. 
> 
> i regret many things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have, like, four poets I'm getting these things from. this one is a return to the wonderful S. Osmond, at AllTheSinkingShips on tumblr. The poem itself is a transcription from memory, so it's probably a little broken, but I like it regardless.
> 
> ALSO. i'm in dire need of a proper editor, but because I tend to write 2,000 words in a rush at one in the morning and post it immediately, I doubt anyone qualified would put up with me or me them, so if you see any typos or larger structural problems here, please please point them out!!!

_ we’re all here mourning like _

_ dear god, dead god--- _

_ but always with blood _

_ always without answer _

_ always giving our entire _

_ & never being heard. _

 

_ this is what we know now: _

_ absinthe tastes better than absence any day. _

_ this is the closest we got to heaven; _

_might as well_ _drown in it._

  
  
  


Harry clung onto the windowsill, his invisible broom bumping off the wall as he tried to pull in close.

 

“Hermione!” he whisper-shouted, and suppressed a laugh as she jumped. The sight of her, still tiny and hunched over her desk with her buck teeth still just as prominent, was a far better reminder of the date than his own age. He pulled his cloak back from his face, leaving his disembodied head floating in the air, and tried again. “Hermione!”

 

She goggled at him and rushed to draw up the window. He shed the cloak and drifted inside, bending to manoeuvre the broom through the small opening. “'Mione,” he breathed, unexpectedly overcome, “It’s so, so great to see you.”

 

“Harry! What on earth do you think you’re doing?” she said, clearly working her way up to a proper shout.

 

“I needed to talk to you,” he tried. “Something’s happened, and I couldn’t really put it in a letter.”

 

“So you, what, flew cross-country in broad daylight?” Hermione interrogated with her hands on her hips, and looked oddly reminiscent of Mrs Weasley.

 

Harry grinned, unrepentant, and shrugged. 

 

Her expression softened to pity. “Is this about your relatives?” she asked, softly.

 

He shrugged again, mouth turning down without his consent.

 

“Listen,” he started, “Can we go visit Ron? I don’t want to say this twice.”

 

She looked conflicted. “Let me ask my parents.”

 

She disappeared down the stairs, and Harry shook his head with a chuckle. “Parents. Of course.  _ That’s _ what I forgot.”

 

⁂

 

“Good morning, Doctors Granger,” he said, suppressing a flood of sadness at the sight of them. “I’m Harry, I’m a friend of ‘Mione’s from school.”

 

Hermione’s mother, who vaguely remembered as being named Jane, glared at him. “How did you get upstairs?” she barked.

 

He sent a wave of magic down his arm, hoping he could manage it without tripping the Trace, and smiled as the disillusionment charm melted away and he waggled the now-visible Nimbus sheepishly in explanation. “I came in through the window.”

 

When no reply seemed to be forthcoming, he soldiered on. “Can Hermione come with me to visit Ron?”

 

Both Doctors Granger blinked at him, and turned to look at each other, looking shell-shocked. After almost a minute with no reply, he decided to push his luck. “OK thanks! Hermione, hold on tight. Nice to meet you!” he rushed out with a bright, appeasing grin, pulling Hermione close and turning into empty space.

 

⁂

 

Harry pulled the pair of them back into existence on the lane from Ottery St. Catchpole to the Burrow, tucked behind a convenient tree. Hermione let out a yelp and almost deafened his left ear. 

 

“What on  _ earth _ was  _ that!”  _ She spat, and Harry had to pull a fragment of her hair out of his mouth before he could reply.

 

He shrugged sheepishly for the umpteenth time, and looked at her beseechingly. “Listen, I’ll explain everything, we just need to get Ron. Maybe--” 

 

Ginny, aged eleven, running and hiding at the sight of him, her elbow in the butter dish, all huge eyes and anxiety. He sighed.

 

“Nevermind.”

 

They ventured forth into the building, ducking out of the way of Charlie and the barrel he’d hefted whole over his shoulder.  The garden was a maelstrom itself, but the kitchen of the Burrow was unmatched in both chaos and splendour; in all his time, Harry'd always thought there was no-where he’d rather live, not even Hogwarts.  The whole building ran on magic, not just the washing washing itself or the wonderful over-protectiveness-clock, but also the way the vines on the wallpaper waved almost imperceptibly in the breeze and the way the mice carved on the bannisters followed you with their noses.

 

If Harry concentrated, like when he’d moved the sand with only a pool of magic, like when he’d thrown them through time, he could feel the power of the place, the circles in the grain and the hearth-stone of the wards sunk into the ground; it hummed, and he could fool himself it reached out to him.

 

He poked his head around the door-frame, and spotted Mrs. Weasley.

 

“Hi!” He chirped, deciding to entirely ignore the issue of what he was doing there. “Can we borrow Ron for a while? We’ll give him back again. Probably.”

 

She blinked at him, taken aback in the same nonplussed, shocked way the Grangers had been. 

 

“He’s-- He’s de-gnoming the garden. Harry, dear, I didn’t know you were visiting.” She framed the statement as a question.

 

“Neither did I, until half an hour ago. Can Hermione and I go help Ron?”

 

“Of course you can, dear. How--”

 

By the time she finished her sentence, Harry had dragged Hermione out of the house entirely.

 

⁂

 

Minerva finished her tea very slowly, staring unrelentingly at the open skylight. Just as she began to tire of the activity, Hadrian sailed silently in, alighting heavily on her arm with the same sort of resigned sadness she found herself plagued by. The owl carried no reply and held his dark head bowed as though ashamed.

 

A terrible suspicion came over her, and she remembered how he’d gone suddenly silent a few days ago-- just when Albus had begun to behave erratically. It was in an uncharacteristic panic that she Floo’d to Hogwarts, alighting from the fire in Severus’s living room.

 

She surveyed the clear signs of occupation with relief. A tea-cup sat precariously on the mantle, recently abandoned, and a bottle of whisky stood incongruously on Severus’ side-table, unopened; she wondered if he’d already got the news. But Severus was fastidious; he wouldn’t leave a cup out for days, especially not full. Something, then, must have prevented him from returning.

 

It was a weak notion, but Minerva had been worn down by a truly awful week and entertained it seriously. She headed for the door, hands trembling around her wand, and nearly jumped out of her skin when a knock sounded from the portrait back.

 

A voice came with it: “Severus? Can I borrow your pensive?”

 

She froze, muscles locking up. The voice was oddly familiar but ultimately unplaceable, the accent subtly wrong. It came again. “Severus, for Merlin’s sake, I can see the light on under the door. You can’t refuse to talk to me just because you’re miserable.”

 

She wrenched the door open with her wand aimed squarely at head height and found it pointing at empty air. Her gaze tracked downward, and she stepped back in shock at the sight of the young Potter, hand outstretched for the handle. As she watched, he drew his hand back slowly, his mouth pulling to left with an odd expression. His friends were huddled behind him, apparently lacking the confidence he seemed to have acquired.

 

“What on earth are you three doing here?”

 

Ms. Granger and the younger Weasley quailed at her raised voice, but Potter just blinked at her and smiled, almost joyful.

 

“That’s really a question for, uh, Professor Snape.” he said, with a sort of almost charming bright tone that reminded her suddenly and strongly of James. “We do have a reason, I promise, but I don’t think I can explain it without Snape. I don’t know what I’m allowed to tell you.” He appeared to have acquired an excuse, and continued, “Some of it’s to do with an ongoing court case. So, you know, some of it’s secret.”

 

She rounded on Ms. Granger, and raised an eyebrow in an attempt to find the truth, but she stayed silent, even though she appeared to be trembling. Mr. Weasley wasn’t even worth a look; he would probably stay quiet under torture.

 

“It seems we both need to find...” She remembered earlier, and fixed once again on Potter. “Severus.”

 

⁂

 

It took until the bridge for one of them to bring it up, running out to Hagrid's for a lead on the mysterious disappearing professor.

 

“You were scared,” said Hermione, very certain and very quiet. Harry stopped walking.

 

“We do believe you, mate, about the future, but when McGonagall told you about the professor you got... weird. Weirder than normal, I mean.”

 

Harry winced, his shoulders setting back. “He wasn’t supposed to die now.” He almost whispered, an unwelcome admission. His voice rose. “That never happened! That’s not how he died, and I don’t know why, and I don’t know what’s going on!”

 

His chest was tight, and he struggled to draw in breath, shaking from the strain of it.

 

“Harry-- Harry!” Hermione hissed. “You’re hysterical, you need to breathe.” 

 

He smiled at her, watery, and tried. “You both know I’ve been-- weird, as Ron put it. Manic. For days. I’m-- I was freer than I’ve ever been, and everyone was alive and nobody was traumatised, and I thought I knew how everything worked, I thought I could save everybody. And...”

 

“And now you think maybe you can’t.” God bless Ron, and his brilliant perceptiveness, ‘emotional range of a teaspoon’ be damned.

 

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Yeah, and I don’t understand why I...”

 

He trailed off, and couldn’t bring himself to start again. He looked at his friends, as yet so young and yet so perfect, and was overcome by a sudden and indomitable rush of affection. 

 

He set off again abruptly, and found himself several paces ahead of the rest of them and the only one to see it.

 

“Ron,” he whispered, urgent, “Don’t you dare look ‘round that corner.”

 

“What--”

 

“Shut up!! Shut up!! Listen. We’re all going to get under the Cloak, and we’re going to run back to the castle as quietly as possible, and--” 

 

_.... spiders flee before it.... _

 

“And we’re going to do something very unwise.”

  
  


⁂

 

Azkaban was fucking freezing. The boat in was bad enough, but the building itself appeared to be refrigerated rather than insulated, and Remus shivered in his cold metal chair. The thing was bolted to the floor, like everything else in this god-cursed institution; a steely hook, presumably for handcuffs, protruded from the table in front of him, and the dark stone walls seeped something damp. 

 

The hinges on the ill-fitting door creaked, giving him plenty of warning when Sirius arrived.

 

He looked just as cold as Remus, skeletal where Remus was just skinny, haggard where Remus was careworn,  angry where Remus was just sad. He’d kept his swagger, shoving the guard’s hands off just as he would’ve ten years ago, staring him down with the same kind of furious sneer that Remus had never faced himself. 

 

Remus hated him, suddenly, with a strength he hadn’t been able to marshall even just after they’d died.

 

He felt the sudden urge to scuff his hands up his face to cover his scars, to shrink into himself, that he hadn’t felt since he was eleven or twelve and hated himself.

 

“I got a letter, yesterday. From Harry,” He started, and found the anger coming back with a vengeance as Sirus’ eyes lit up at the mention of the child. Did he want to finish what he’d started, to kill everyone he’d left behind, or was he so far into his head that he didn’t register him as the son of someone he’d killed? 

 

“I don’t know how he find out about you at all-- god knows how we kept you quiet-- but he,” Lord, Merlin, this was harder than it had any right to be. “He reckons you never got a trial.”

 

Sirius almost leaped from his seat, a wide grin stretching his thin skin. “I assumed you  _ knew!” _ His happiness was violent, his eyes alight, and Remus felt his nails sharpen as they bit into his palm. 

 

“When Harry took out Snake-Face, the DMLE was so busy I never got a trial. They just threw me in here--” His face darkened. “Indefinitely pending further investigation, which as we all know, means ‘forever.’”

 

Sirius smiled at him from across the table, and Remus wanted to punch it off his face. He was reminded of Sirius’ fierce joy when they’d kissed under the Willow, drunk as sailors, in fifth year, and how fiercely Sirius had denied it when they woke up in the morning. He said nothing.

 

Sirius leaned back in, and this close Remus could smell the blood under his fingernails, the dirt in his hair and his reeking breath. He refused to move away.

 

“Moony...” he tried, beseeching, as though he was asking to share a Chocolate Frog. “If there had been a trial, I wouldn’t be here. Moony, please believe me, I was  _ framed, _ Peter was the secret-keeper--”

 

“You expect me to believe the man you slaughtered framed you?” Remus spat, more miserable and more furious than he thought he’d ever been. He felt blood well up on his palms, and dug his nails in further.

 

“He didn’t die, he-- Dumbledore knows. He knows we switched the Secret. Ask him, he’ll tell you, it wasn’t me, I promise.”

 

Remus felt sick. “Can you stop making appeals to dead men?”

 

“Dumbledore’s dead?” 

 

Sirius looked genuinely upset, and Remus wondered how much of him was as much of a deceit as his grief. He laughed, low, dead. “By now? Almost certainly. Your friend Grindelwald attacked him yesterday. Last I heard, he wasn’t likely to make it through the night.”

 

Silence reigned, tyrannous.

 

“Sirius,” He almost whispered, “You were my best friend. I want to believe you more than I want to breathe, right now. But whatever you say, whatever excuses you can find, James and Peter are dead, and they’re never going to be alive again. I can’t risk trusting you, not for anything, without irrefutable proof. You don’t have any kind of proof at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry: 'you can't refuse to talk to people just because you're miserable.'
> 
> me, a gremlin: i ABSOLUTELY CAN. 
> 
>  
> 
> things I like: two people who used to bang being miserable and/or batshit crazy at each other in prison visiting rooms.


	11. that same old cannonball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the school is defended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today's title is from Brandi Carlile's song Cannonball. i've dispensed with the epigraphs, because I feel like they don't add all that much to the story, and choosing them is a pain, but the old ones will stay
> 
> things i love: ron, hermione.

The lot of them crowded behind the door, backs to it in the same terrified way they’d pressed against the door to Fluffy’s room last year. Ron clenched his fists up by his chest, unaware of what exactly the threat was but ready to punch it regardless. The bathroom in which they hid was unfamiliar, if deserted, presumably one of the girls; he’d no idea at all why Harry had led them there, but presumably he must have a reason; the Harry that had come to the Burrow that morning was confident and manic and oddly wise in a way his Harry had never been, but he was still his mate, and Ron trusted him.

 

He had the same sort of sadness. He looked at Ron’s family the same way he had when he’d first met him, in King’s Cross a year ago. That was what convinced him. He didn’t need any ‘pensive memories’ as proof, but Harry seemed to be convinced there were things they needed to see.

 

Privately, he thought Harry’s future probably wasn’t very nice.

 

“Ron,” Harry said, voice still caught by all the running, “What would you have done if I’d told you on the bridge that there’s a horde of ancromantula coming out of the forest?”

 

Ron felt his entire body lock up, and his heart kicked back into gear. Ancromantula. He’d read about them for Defence homework, once, and he still had nightmares.

 

“Made an unholy racket?” Harry suggested, and Ron nodded, pale.

 

“Sounds about right, yeah.”

 

Harry made a face like a :I, and squinted fixedly at the ground a little to the left of Ron’s feet.

 

“There are sentient spiders advancing on the castle,” said Hermione, quite sensibly, and Harry responded with the same face, looking up at the ceiling this time.

 

“So we’re hiding in a bathroom.”

 

“Not, uh, not exactly. We’re fighting fire with fire.” Harry said, entirely nonsensically. “There’s-- listen, in Second year, I found-- _we_ found this basilisk, under the castle, that’d been going around petrifying people. So, you know, I killed it. But back then, it was being controlled by a chunk of Tom-- Of Voldemort’s soul, and I think that I can maybe control it, this time.” He tilted his head back and raised his eyebrows, as though that was a completely reasonable list of things to say. “I _hope_ I can control it! It was supposed to be-- Slytherin put it there to protect the school. I think it was Tom that made it a monster, in the end. And, uh, spiders are about as afraid of basilisks as Ron is of spiders.”

 

That was really very afraid. He wasn’t sure Harry recognised quite how afraid that was.

 

“Ron,” Harry started again, after a pause, and he braced himself for some more ludicrousness. “You don’t have to deal with the spiders. I mean-- someone has to go get McGonagall.”

 

Finally. Some sense out of that boy’s mouth.

 

He fled, with no shame.

 

⁂

 

“No, don’t go down that way, the tunnel caved in. I, uh, I broke it.”

 

“How do you break a tunnel?”

 

“Paranoia. Also, _Bombarda._ Same difference.”

 

Hermione chuckled weakly next to him, pale. He walked backwards a few paces, to walk next to her, and held her hand in his own, squeezing tightly as if to make sure she was real. Her smile looked a little less grim, if for only a few seconds.

 

“Where are we going, then?”

 

“So there’s the big round room, with the basilisk in it, right? And I don’t remember much, but there were at least three entrances. So, I reckon, we should be able to get in from the side. We’ll figure it out when we get there.”

 

He hadn’t really noticed, the last time he was there, but the chamber was properly subterranean. The tunnel went almost straight down, and he reckoned they’d fallen for at least a minute, with some sort of magic to slow their fall; this deep into the ground the air felt different. It was cold, like metal that’d been kept out of the sun for days, and it smelled almost sweet with rot.

 

The tunnel walls were worn smooth, polished to a shine by some unknown force, and glistened like semi-precious stones. The reddish-golden strata looked like jasper, or carnelian; Hermione would know the proper name. It bounced back the pale glow of his _Lumos_ , and he could see almost the entire length of the tunnel.

 

The passage was on a slope, and they were headed further downwards all the time; the stone changed colours as they walked, shifting from almost pink to red to a deep blue-black, flecked with gold. The ever-present sound of water, muddying the echoes of their footsteps, dropped out of hearing; though the air chilled further, Harry could swear there was a breeze, stirring his hair as they walked in silence.

 

⁂

 

After far too long, they came upon a doorway, a pointed, ornate archway onto a thick blackness.

 

The door it opened on, once lit with pale wand-light, he’d never seen before. The stone walls were concealed with a dark wood panelling, warped with time but beautifully carved; the bookshelves the covered the whole space were fit to burst with gilded, leather-bound tomes, the chains that bound them gleaming; rows of scrolls piled into every available space. The floor, the same gleaming jasper as the tunnel, was inlaid with runes in shining silver, angular like the Norse futhark runes Hermione had deciphered - would decipher - never, now, would need to decipher - in Dumbledore’s code.

 

The room was circular, the same structure as the Chamber where he’d fought Tom, with arches facing of at every cardinal direction. Harry worked out the space in his head, the map of tunnels, and figured that the left passage should lead them to the snake.

 

They crossed the threshold -- there was a feeling like a ringing bell, but blurring in his bones -- the magic of the place sung -- the runes, the silver, writhed and turned about itself, like snakes, falling out of their harsh angles and turning, orienting to him as if he were North, were the magic to the watch-hand, and --

 

“No, no, no!” Harry burst out, dancing out of the way of the runes, pulling Hermione behind him. “We haven’t got _time_ for this!”

 

They ran, hopping and dodging to avoid touching the silver where it followed them, and they burst through the door at great speed. The runes froze as they crossed the boundary and the ringing in his head subsided.

 

⁂

 

The light from his wand cast a circle of clarity, but it disappeared into the great size of the cavern, such that when Harry looked up the ceiling far above their heads it was a void. The corridor on which they stood was raised above the cavern floor, narrow and twisting and bordered by blackness on either side. It was paved in shining green cobbles, ringing at their footsteps through the echoes did not return.

 

“Hermione,” Harry said, almost a whisper despite himself, “Please tell me you’ve got a wand.”

 

She grew pale as she shook her head, and Harry passed her his phoenix wand, drawing the elder wand and holding it ready.

 

“Why do you have Dumbledore’s wand?”

 

“It’s not--” Harry had to bite back a snarl, and couldn’t quite express why. “It’s mine, and I’ll thank you not to mention it.”

 

...   _who walks with heavy tread upon my spine ..._

 

The voice of the snake came quiet, undirected.

 

_... who comes with footfalls loud, who dares disrupt the sleep of centuries ..._

 

Hermione clutched at his hand, and he pulled the two of them off the walkway, horribly aware that it wasn’t. The scales, oddly beautiful, were cold and slick beneath his hands. He said nothing.

 

The snake’s monstrous head rounded the corner of its own tail before Harry could cover his eyes, but its eyes were milky white with film. It swayed and turned, weaving in the air; its tongue flickered.

 

“Intruders, interlopers, introduce yourself, or I shall have to look for myself...”

 

It spoke in a quiet voice that tumbled like water, humming, low and threatening. The quiet, Harry thought, was probably more scary than volume.

 

Harry steeled himself, and clutched tighter to Hermione, sick and cold with fear.

 

“My name is Harry Potter,” he hissed, dropping into the susurrus of Parseltongue. “We’ve come to ask for your help.”

 

The beast’s mouth stretched wide in a parody of a smile.

 

“A speaker,” It hummed, “Lo, a lord of my House, one waits a thousand years for a speaker and two turn up at once, like buses I am told, my little lord may make its supplication if it wishes, and Telemachus may lend their aid,” Telemachus made a clicking sound in the back of its throat, thoughtful. “Though I may not.”

 

Harry swallowed, and felt his skin flush cold. “I, uh, there’s something wrong with the wards--”

 

“I am not the cornerstone, fool speaker! I stand for no House though House may stand for me, do not ask me for magics, do not ask me for wards!” It reared its head, the golden frill flaring, and its scales pulled back from its mouth, snarling like a dog.

 

“It’s not the wards, it’s--”

 

“Did it not _say_ it were the wards? Speak, speaker, if it must, but think aforehand. What, plainly, what clearly, _what_ does it _want?”_ Telemachus was almost shrieking now, white fangs bright against the dark chasm of its mouth. This close, Harry could see the shape of its irises, rolling under the white film.

 

Abruptly and without warning, Hermione shoved him behind her, training his holly wand on Telemachus. “I don’t know what you’re saying,” she yelled, “But if you don’t stop scaring Harry I’ll hex you to within an inch of your life, I swear!”

 

There was a moment of silence. It fell like a drop in a pond, expanding outwards until the distant sound of water stilled and even Harry’s heartbeat felt shallow and whisper-thin.

 

“Speaker has brought me a present, a mouthful, a meal, how kind, how thoughtful--” it hissed, barely a sound in the silence, and Harry felt himself move before he was aware of his decision.

 

It was useless, of course, because Hermione screamed a _Reducto_ before he could open his mouth, and the snake was thrown bodily into the air, the huge beast flying for one giddy moment and landing with a crash that threatened to topple the whole castle.

 

The air was crushed from Harry’s lungs as he saw it move in the aftermath, visions of white fangs and sickly yellow eyes and Tom’s vitriol and venom hiding behind his eyelids, and --

 

The beast began to laugh.

 

It was a rasping sound, like sandpaper on Harry’s nerves. Its mouth hung open, and Harry watched the bones in its jaw click and separate as it drew back.

 

“Oh, _what_ a present,” it snarled, gleeful. “What a treasure, be not afraid, it will not be harmed, it will not hurt, no, Telemachus is _impressed...”_

 

Its coils, laid about the cavern where they’d fallen, twitched tighter around them, moving towards Hermione as if to crush her. Hermione looked at him, pale and sweating and he smiled weakly.

 

“Telemachus -- the snake likes you, I think?”

 

Her mouth moved, but she said nothing. Luckily, Telemachus stepped in to fill the lull in conversation.

 

“If the present is not a present, then what has the little Lord brought me to eat?”

 

“To _eat?”_ Harry stuttered in response, and the snake swayed its head from side to side in disgust.

 

“Telemachus is very large, hmm, and has not eaten in fifty years.”

 

“Uh...” Harry cast his mind about, frantic. “There are acromantula storming the school?”

 

“Why did the little Lord not lead with that?” the snake dropped its head low, breaking into that chilling laugh, and then it was gone.

 

“Harry, what--”  


“I think he’s going to eat the spiders.”

 

“Oh,” she breathed, relieved, and then: “Aren’t they supposed to be sentient?”

 

“Yeah. They can talk and everything.”

 

“Ah. Harry?”

 

He hummed in acknowledgement.

 

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a parselmouth?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my last chapter got zero comments, and i'm. paranoid. Is This Broken.
> 
> he's called telemachus b/c. 1. gold frill ('golden-haired Achaeans' and all that shit) 2. slytherin's a pretentious mother fucker 3. he wanted 2 find his dad when he came to hogwarts 4. i wrote this when i was supposed to be reading the odyssey
> 
> i love weird older-than-feudalism magic characters that dont get gender or manners or grammar and just exist to fuck shit up and say cryptic things
> 
> i wrote a whole chapter without switching povs!!!!!! and introducing a plot point taking place miles away!! are u proud of me


	12. a little goddamn rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the castle gets a word in edgeways.
> 
> WARNING: semi-graphic description of injury (electrical burns.) after the second ⁂. probably skippable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hush. hush. listen. i have a system. i do an hour of studying, and then i write or outline for twenty minutes. turns out this works better than ignoring fun things entirely. who knew. if u read c.12 back when it was me saying 'soz kids im off being responsible bye:' im done being responsible!! FUCK ignoring fun things in favour of uninterrupted studying!! thats how u get burnout!! love urself!! write bad fic!!
> 
> a short chapter because i SWEAR i am WORKING. (but not too hard.)

 

The cobbles above Harry ground together as they moved out of the way, mechanisms built in the 1400s rusted and shrieking. Telemachus wound his way through the bowels of the castle parallel to the ground, and as Harry tried to keep up he caught snatches of an argument through the tiles.

 

“He’s clearly tied into the wards--”

 

“And what good is that doing us now, exactly--”

 

“My friend, the castle--”

 

“ _Fuck_ the castle--”

 

That last one sounded like the Fat Friar, which was a tad surreal.

 

They finally broke the surface, Harry emerging blinking into the light, and he discovered that it actually was the Fat Friar, because the great hall was full of ghosts. There appeared to be a Weasley-style screaming argument taking place, but Harry couldn’t quite make out the reason.

 

The ceiling was almost black; the distant sound of thunder cracked and echoed; the candle-flames, floating by the rafters, streamed sideways in a driving, howling wind that existed only in a conjured pocket of sky.

 

Hermione followed out of the tunnel behind him and walked straight into the Grey Lady.

 

Telemachus didn’t seem to care about the uncharacteristic weather or the impromptu conference, making an exasperated noise before winding his way through the crowd to the doorway, disappearing as quickly as he’d arrived. Surprisingly, this did nothing to entice the crowd to move; they didn’t seem to notice at all, in fact, with one exception.

 

“Oh, this is bloody ridiculous.” said the Grey Lady, accent crisp and Home Counties and final in the way that you only seem to get when someone very posh gets very stressed. He’d heard it from Sirius, a few times, and it was always a treat. The vowels _clicked._

 

The mist of the crowd parted in surprise, at the Grey Lady’s swearing or at the noise of the tunnel grinding closed he wasn’t sure, and he caught a glimpse of red hair.

 

“‘Scuse me,” he tried, and then “Could you let me through?” and when that didn’t work he set his shoulders and waded in.

 

It was like walking through a sea of jelly and ice-cream; indescribably gelatinous, variably cold, and slightly synthetic-raspberry flavoured. The Bloody Baron reared hilariously as the shoulders briefly became one shoulder; Harry ground his trembling hands into fists, and suppressed the giddy urge to laugh, and wondered if he’d gone into shock.

 

Ron was standing beside the Headmaster’s chair, which bore an unconscious Severus, grey and shaking.

 

“I went to find McGonagall,” he said, clearly unsettled, “But-- the Bloody Baron showed up and-- the ghosts found Snape and he’s unconscious so I-- I was going to take him to hospital. He had... this?”

 

He waved the Sword of Gryffindor vaguely, holding it gingerly by the scabbard.

 

Harry nodded, still not all there. He took Severus’ pulse; his heart blinked unsteadily in his wrist. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, there’s something wrong with him.”

 

(The treacherous fucker had clearly tried to go after Telemachus himself, after warning Harry away. He'd been fine! It was fine! Who did he think he was.)

 

Several things happened at once.

 

The sky above their heads fell silent; the wind moved, but slowly; the clouds churned and thundered, but as though moving through water.

 

The candles, every one of them, lit with a pale blue flare.

 

The house crests, faded onto the walls behind the staff table, grew bright again, colours fresh and new; the Slytherin snake almost shone in the lamplight, eyes gleaming.

 

The ghosts froze, as though petrified, glass pillars still and silent, wavering as though Harry were looking at them through a fire.

 

Severus woke up.

 

Harry dropped his hand and scrambled back, eyes fixed on where Severus’ own were paper-pale, pupils fogged like sea-glass. Severus flexed his hands, opening and closing them, looking at them with his white eyes as though they were unfamiliar; he turned his head with an almost mechanical movement and looked at Harry, slow and indescribably sad, and stood up.

 

“He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s--”

 

McGonagall had burst through the door at the back of the hall, and now stood with her back to it, wand drawn and pointed at Severus. Harry thought that that was probably a reasonable response.

 

Severus seemed to register the noise, and turned with a similar slow motion to fix his eyes on McGonagall. He seemed to smile, for a moment, and then it was gone again. He spoke, a lilting accent entirely unlike what Harry was used to, with a lightness and an irreverancy to it that made him shudder.

 

“A pity it could not be you, but two of one is one.”

 

Harry realised, a tad too late, that-- “That’s not Severus.”

 

The thing stood in front of him breathed a rattling breath, wheezing almost like a laugh, and gazed somewhere over Harry’s head. It smiled, or at least it moved its lips upwards at the corners.

 

“‘Tis strange, to be of flesh, not stone, the tender of regret so strong...” It turned its face upwards, smiling blankly at the storm, and without changing its expression managed to give off a feeling of an indescribable melancholy.

 

“‘Tis strange to think that he would die, so odd to think that he could die, but two of one is one.”

 

“It wasn’t Grindlewald, was it,” said Ron, voice shaking. “It was you.”

 

“This time, yes, this time the fault was mine, and this I came to tell.” It looked back at Severus’ hands, moved them as though it wasn’t sure how the bones worked.

 

“I did not know that he would die, he did not think that he could die, but two of one is one and one is mine.” It stared past Ron’s head in the same sightless, blank way it’d stared past Harry’s.

 

“One of three, you are, and three that is yet whole--” Thunder rolled, slower than it should, deep and echoing. It turned back to Harry, moving like a clockwork man.

 

“Two of three you hold, and three of three you have, and two of three you lost and found, as one of two yet dead you breathe, two that are mine and two of five, three you have and three you found, so find me three and make! Me! _Five!”_

 

Lightning arched from the rafters, moving in a slow creep that burned its way onto the dark of Harry’s retinas. He lunged forwards, tried to pull Severus’ body away from the light, but found himself stuck in the same slow-motion special effect as it hit.

 

⁂

 

Severus blinked and felt humanity bleed back into the centre of him.

 

 _That_ hurt. He trembled with the burn of it, took great gasping breaths and steeled himself to the feeling of having a body.

 

_So strange to be of flesh, not stone._

 

He realised that the pain might be actual physical pain. His right hand, when he brought it up to clear his eyes, was scored with burns, a sick purple on his palm and forefinger where it wasn’t dead black char and a deep, seeping red in branching fractal shapes reaching down his fingers and up his shirt-sleeve. The electricity seemed to have earthed itself via his wand; it lay blackened and charred on the ground where it’d fallen, and the cobblestones were dark and steaming like a cigarette burn a metre across.

 

Helena Ravenclaw stepped forward from the crowd of ghosts and addressed him, oddly reverent. “Can we-- Have you--” she said, and then trailed off.

 

Severus remembered being aware of his own body, collapsed in the tower; he remembered watching without eyes as they’d found him. He raised an eyebrow, and nodded jerkily at her non-question. “Thank you for your help, but the matter is resolved.”

 

The crowd of ghosts quietly disbanded, watching him with transparent eyes as they left. He felt the skin of his hand split and bubble, felt the robes at his neck grow cool and slick with the fluid that seeped from the burns, and licked at where the electricity had drawn a blister across his bottom lip. He carefully did not look at his palm.

 

Potter-- Harry-- spoke his name, quietly, as a reminder that he was not alone or as a question he wasn’t sure.

 

“Let me--” He started, and looked at Minerva’s expectant face, scared and white but not quite so tired as it had been. “I’ll treat the burns, and then I suppose I owe you an explanation.”

 

About what, he wasn’t quite sure.

 

An ache in his bones, his spine and jaw and metatarsals, made itself horribly apparent. He attempted to curl the fingers of his right hand and found that he couldn’t. His heart raced, giddy and weak.

 

“I may need to go to A&E, actually.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)
> 
> i dont know what to say. sorry? he'll live?
> 
> if you skipped the Injury: Sev notices that he's in a Lot Of Pain, tries to soldier though it very briefly, eventually decides to go to A&E. acquired burns on his face, exit wound on his right hand.
> 
> this depiction of lightning-strike aftermath is... variable in accuracy. for one, 1. its magic, not actually electricity  
> 2\. its def. not at 50,000V lol the castle's strong but not that strong  
> 3\. if he were hit by actual lightning, everyone in his vicinity would get smaller but still debilitating shocks and most of their injuries would come from blunt force trauma (lightning will throw you very hard in a random direction)  
> 4\. he would pass out pretty much on impact. g'night. see u all in a week when his brain's back online  
> 5\. he should actually go blind! fun fact, lightning strikes very often cause cataracts within a week, and we don't know why!  
> 6\. he SHOULD NOT be able to use that arm. aha. all those bones? fried. nerves? boiled.
> 
> but he will have some very cool-looking scars. when he's out of intensive care. look up lichtenberg figures!!
> 
> if u want to talk to me, yell at me to update, ask about my research/meta (b/c whoo boy is there a lot of it), or hear about my very complicated opinions on Severus Snape, i have a specific writing tumblr now at @total_smokestack !!


	13. like a drunk in a midnight choir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things are revealed; Severus has nerve damage; somebody has plans; Harry is not eleven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you may have read the first portion of this chapter before; i posted it, and then realised a lot of it was unclear, and deleted it and re-wrote portions. if it's still unclear, tell me where and i'll patch it up (although you're not supposed to know everything. shh.)

Ron had quietly excused himself when Snape had been on the emergency ward for an hour already and it looked like nothing would happen for a long while yet. It was alright for Harry, and he supposed Hermione’s parents might not care so much, but he couldn’t just disappear for the day. An hour or so, to see some proof in that Pensieve thing, that was fine, but he was already going to be in trouble for shirking his de-gnoming. Harry had asked him to hang onto the sword and shrunk it down for him - ‘we’ll probably need it later,’ he’d said, as though everyone needs to slay a dragon or whatever sometimes. In his defence, anyone who can make the logical leap of ‘ancromantula? We’ll release the fucking basilisk’ probably does just need a sword sometimes.   


  
So he’d said his goodbyes and headed to the atrium of the building, shelled out three knuts for some floo powder (extortion, honestly,) and headed home.

  
  
He’d been thinking of Snape, his white eyes when he was possessed, the weird way he’d moved, and how the lightning had burned its way up his face, boiling the skin and slicing his lip. He tried not to, but he thought of him laid out on a hospital bed - he hadn’t seen him, he’d been taken into surgery, but Hermione had said they might have to get bits of burned flesh out of him, because the lightning had gone through him. His mind was busy, was the point, when he’d stumbled out of the fireplace, and he wasn’t prepared for his mother.

  
  
She bowled him over, yelling his name, and crushed him into a hug.

  
  
“Mum,” he laughed, “I’m fine, what’s wrong, what happened?”

  
  
His mother pulled back, and he felt bile rise in his throat, because she looked terrified. She raised a hand and stabbed it in the direction of the clock, and-- Oh. ‘Mortal peril.’

  
  
“Where were you? Exactly?” she asked, and when he cowered sheepishly she continued, “You disappear with that Potter boy-- didn’t even ask to leave!-- and we’ve no idea where you went, and then wind up in mortal peril somehow, and then you’re in hospital, and then you come home and apparently you’re fine? Hmm? Where have you been!”

  
  
“Harry needed to borrow something, to explain his, uh, his holiday research project. We didn’t think we’d be gone long at all. There was-- Nobody was actually in danger. It was sorted out really quickly. We just had to go to St. Mungo’s ‘cause Professor Snape got--” what was the word Harry had used at the desk? “Eleckticured.”   


  
“Professor Snape was involved? What business has he got, meeting my sons in the holidays? Where did you go?” 

  
  
“No, he was-- He’s Harry’s guardian, now, or something. They’re staying at Hogwarts, ‘cause Snape hasn’t got a spare room, or something.”

  
  
“Right. How did Snape get eleckticured so bad he had to go to hospital, if nobody was in danger?”

  
  
“Does he count as a person, though? I mean, have you met him?”

  
  
“Yes, actually; Arthur and I were at school while he was a first-year, although we never really talked to him, and we knew him in-- Well, in the war. Ronald, what have I told you about disrespecting your teachers?”

  
  
He tried borrowing some of Harry’s confidence, and smiled at her as disarmingly as he could. “You agree with me, though. You think he’s a git, too.”

  
  
She frowned at him, but it was playful, and he knew he was at least mostly off the hook.

  
  
“Listen, Ronald,” she started, cautious and uh-oh, that wasn’t good. “Severus Snape is-- a complicated man. He’s certainly not a bad person, but he’s not exactly the sort of person you ought to associate with.  And this Potter lad... I knew his father, too, and he was the same. Turned out alright in the end, and he had a marvelous gift for making people like him, but he was trouble, and he made trouble for his friends. I know you like Harry, but he may well turn out to be just as much trouble, and if he’s being brought up by Severus... Well. I know I wouldn’t trust him with a child.”

  
  
“Mum! Harry’s my friend. He gets into trouble, yeah, but he’s not a ‘bad influence’ or whatever you think he is. You don’t know him. I do.”

  
He... wasn’t sure how true that was, actually, but he did know his mum had got the wrong end of the stick.

  
  
“Oh, Ron.” Wonderful. She thought he was being stupid. “Remind me to tell you about Sirius Black, when I haven’t got tea to cook. And Ronald?”

  
  
He perked up at the mention of tea, and then deflated at her expression.

  
  
“You’re doing Percy’s chores for the rest of the summer. He needs to study for his OWLs, and you need to learn not to disappear for hours and drive your mother out of her mind with worry.”

  
  
⁂   


  
Severus woke up in excruciating pain, which made complete sense. What made slightly less sense was that none of it was in his right arm. It felt like a void; the shoulder joint stung like hell, but beyond that it felt like his arm was just-- gone.

  
  
He peeled his eyelids apart; his vision was blurry with sleep, but it didn’t clear as he blinked; the vaulted ceilings of St. Mungo’s remained a pale smudge. It took an unreasonable amount of willpower to raise his head off the pillow, but he managed it, and found that his arm still existed, at least if the vaguely arm-shaped object on his right was in fact his arm under all the bandages. His brain was sending signals to move, proprioception informed him that his fingers were opening and closing, but the whole region was dead and still. 

  
  
Not an incredible sign, he had to admit. Probably not great news.

  
  
His left arm appeared to operate, despite a porcupine of IV needles - god, why’d it have to be his right arm - and he managed to flail it in the approximate direction of his bedside table and find his chart. Bringing it up close to his face, he was relieved to find that some considerate healer had given him the non-standard long-sleeved hospital gown; it made him uncomfortable to consider that someone -- many someones, probably - had seen the bastard thing when cutting the clothes off the burns, but at least he didn’t have to parade it around. 

  
  
He had to squint to make out the text, holding the clipboard not ten centimetres from his face.

  
  
Severe internal burns, treated with - fucking hell - skeletal injections of Skelegro and dittanite, which explained the pain. Lots of intravenous fluids; the cell debris leaking from the burns must be messing up his kidneys, which explained some of the abdominal pain. He’d had surgery. Apparently part of his muscle had died. Some good news: his arm was not completely paralysed, just on some very strong local anaesthetic, which made sense, although there was some pretty severe nerve damage to his hands and jaw. Fucking fantastic. "Cataracts expected to develop?" He’d no idea why a lightning strike might cause cataracts, but it would explain why he couldn’t see for shit. And-- oh, wonderful. The healers were worried about ‘psychological issues as a result of disability and deformity.’ That meant A. he’d have to dodge recommendations of therapists that he absolutely did need but absolutely could not use, and B. the superficial burns were behaving like curse wounds, and wouldn’t heal fully.

  
  
He’d absorbed that in a curiously academic rush of information, noting and tucking away each new fact without any sort of emotional response. He was distantly aware that he should be feeling something other than ‘mild distress’ at the possibility of not being able to use his dominant hand, but all he could muster was a sort of vague worry about how his work would suffer from not being able to write with his right hand.

  
  
It might be the anaesthetic; it might be shock; it might be a sort of magical rush caused by temporary omniscience and the backlash of being a building literally incapable of emotion for several hours. Regardless of the cause, he’d be upset about it if he were able to, but he wasn’t.   


  
⁂

  
“The thing is... You can’t have two headmasters at once.”

  
  
Severus was slow and quiet in the hospital bed, left hand moving lazily as he spoke as if to distract from his right hand suspended still. Harry had found McGonagall still in the waiting room, asleep in her tiny plastic chair, when he’d shuffled back into St. Mungo’s that morning, and he didn’t know who looked worse, Severus covered in surgical gauze and full of needles or McGonagall rumpled and dead-faced. She sat forward now, looking slightly more alive as she listened.

  
  
“I don’t mean in, uh, a metaphorical way. You cannot have two headmasters of Hogwarts at once; the magic won’t allow it, because the magic is a, a computer made of brick, and it thinks like ice, but not quite so kindly. And the-- the castle’s magic set us to fight, and decided whoever lived should be the victor. But it didn’t-- it didn’t quite understand that one of us would die. It realised, just as Albus died, clinging to the spirit of him, and it couldn’t deal with it, so it came to apologise as best it knew how. Castles-- A thing made out of stone and magic doesn’t fit into a human brain, and likewise my mind didn’t fit into the space left by the castle. The quickest way back was via the storm. ”

  
  
“So how did you win? Forgive me, Severus, but I wouldn’t bet on you in this scenario.” 

  
  
McGonagall’s brows were furrowed in consternation, something like disbelief vying with what was clearly blame.

  
  
“‘S OK. I wouldn’t bet on me either.” He said nothing for several moments, looking blearily somewhere past McGonagall’s right ear, and Harry was about to prompt him to continue when he started again.

  
  
“I was actually at Hogwarts, for one, and he was, what, in London or somewhere. And then he fucked off to Romania to visit Grindlewald--” This was accompanied with a sweep of his hand and an odd little finger-wiggle, “The castle didn’t like that.  There’s only so far you can go before you can’t go home again.”

 

“And he’s old, old as dirt, old as sin. He was born in, thingy, the 1840s or something. That’s ridiculous. It’s bullshit. He’s older than, than... dirt.”

  
  
“There was something wrong with his magic. It’s like, like part of it’s been borrowed, and he’s using someone else’s, stealing back what’s been stolen, but it all comes to nothing, sum-total, in the end. I would say that it was the ring, but that’s been rewritten, rewound. It’s, it’s, one of three, but not that one. And that’s why, I think. The problems with my magic are all standard atrocities, or maybe not, any more. It could be broken, or it could be my eyes...” 

  
  
Harry and McGonagall shared a commiserative glance of worried bafflement. 

  
  
“I don’t think we’ll get anything useful out of him today,” said McGonagall.

  
  
“That’s true. I’m excellent at withstanding torture,” Severus broke in, and Harry blinked, slightly disturbed.

 

⁂

 

He’d cast a glamour before dragging Severus to St. Mungo’s, imitating the coppery hair and freckles he’d been given in Charing Cross, and that let him wander Diagon Alley unmolested; it was the summer holidays, wizarding children were expected to skulk around and stare at broomsticks. McGonagall seemed a tad unnerved by the illusion, squinting at him when she thought he wasn’t looking, but that was her prerogative. He’d worked out that she had actually spent the whole night there, and insisted that she have breakfast, at least, before she started to try and work things out with the Board.

 

He’d made an executive decision to not risk the glamour failing and being mobbed, and taken them to the restaurant in Trafalgar Square after stopping by Gringotts. It was a Monday morning, but it was a Monday morning during the school holidays on Charing Cross, so they’d had to battle through the twin impediments of eight-year-olds being dragged to the British Museum by beleaguered parents and gaggles of identically dressed south-east Asian tourists standing stock-still on the pavement taking pictures of buses.

 

Harry burst into the peace of the restaurant with a relieved sigh. McGonagall glided in behind him, visibly out-of-place in her robes, but Harry reasoned that Muggle society gave a certain amount of leeway to oddly-dressed women over the age of fifty, particularly when they were as determinedly composed as McGonagall was.

 

They were hustled to a table by the same gorgeous waiter as last time, and Harry was shaken out of his reverie by the man asking after his dad. He was once again reminded that his traitor body wasn’t even twelve, and felt an odd surge of hatred for Hot Waiter for continually reminding him, with his rude  _ concern  _ and his completely impolite attractiveness.

 

McGonagall seemed to settle back into her skin, after the odd emptiness of the hospital, when she’d got her hands on a cup of tea. She eyed him across the table and raised an eyebrow, expecting an answer to a question she’d never posed.

 

“I suppose you’ve got a few questions,” he said,  deliberately not giving in.

 

She merely raised another eyebrow, and he found that he couldn’t quite stand up to it.

 

“I was at Hogwarts for the same reason Severus was. There was... an incident, with my previous guardians, and I couldn’t stay with them anymore. It turned out that my mother had said, in her will, that Severus ought to have guardianship-- to everyone’s surprise, I think, not least him. So he, he wound up taking custody unexpectedly, and he doesn’t actually have a spare room where I could stay, so we set up in Hogwarts until he could find someplace else.”

 

McGonagall looked sort of miserable, and Harry wondered what she assumed the incident was. There must be some sort of mad narrative in her head, connecting all of the unspecified ‘incidents’ that he and Severus had appealed to in the last few days.

 

“I must say, Mr. Potter, you’ve taken the prospect of a childhood spent with Professor Snape rather better than I’d have thought you would.”

 

“He’s taken it pretty well, too. I didn’t expect him to be pleased, exactly, but he’s been, y’know, nice about it. Well, he’s never exactly  _ nice, _ but he’s been not quite as abrasive as expected. So I’m trying to be nice about it, too. We did have a rather spectacular shouting match, though, a few days ago, but that’s blown over. And my previous living situation had become, hmm, untenable, as he put it, so this is-- This is better.”

 

McGonagall was back to looking miserable and sort of guilty, and Harry was reminded of how Ron and Hermione would  go quiet and awkward whenever he’d mentioned his relatives. He begun to consider, for the first time in his life, whether maybe the way his relatives had treated him crossed the line from ‘unkind’ to ‘abusive.’ He dismissed the idea, because if that were the case, then he’d been abused, and then he’d have to deal with that, and that sounded exhausting.

 

Hot Waiter returned to take their orders, and Harry took the opportunity to indulge in a fry-up, as a sort of investigation as to why Uncle Vernon liked them so much. He’d cooked a near-infinite number of them, but he’d never actually had one.

 

“Mister Potter-- Harry, I’m glad that you’ve sorted things out to your satisfaction, but you should keep in mind that if you have any issues with Severus, you do have options. Just because he’s better than your relatives doesn’t mean you have to put up with him, if you’re unhappy.”

 

Harry was busy devouring a mushroom with a fried egg inside it-- genius! What a masterstroke of efficiency and textural juxtaposition!-- and forgot to answer for a few moments, then looked up slightly sheepishly and mumbled a ‘thanks.’

 

“Do you know how, exactly, Severus got tied up in the Castle wards?”

 

Oh, no. Oh no. He did know, he knew exactly how, and he couldn’t tell her. His mind worked frantically to find an excuse, and landed on how exhausted Severus had been after fixing up with the wards on his quarters.

 

“I didn’t want to use the dormitories, ‘cause they’re weird with no-one else there. So Severus, uh, he said I could use the visitor’s quarters, but he had to fiddle with the wards so that they’d let a student in. I don’t know if he knew he’d done it, but he looked really tired just after he’d done that, so I reckon that might be it. That was a few days ago, and that’s when Professor Dumbledore got sick, wasn’t it?”

 

McGonagall hummed, eating a bacon sandwich with a ludicrous amount of dignity. Harry sighed internally, having constructed a satisfactory lie, and felt very Slytherin.

 

“He was never very good at warding, was Severus. I recall that he almost failed Ancient Runes. Now, Mister Potter,  would you like me to apparate you to a friend’s house? Severus will probably be in hospital for several days, and you need somewhere to stay the night.”

 

“‘S fine, I can floo back to Hogwarts from the Leaky Cauldron, but thanks for offering.”

 

She frowned at him, grandmotherly, and sipped her tea. “Potter,” she said, “I can’t leave you alone overnight.”

 

It was said very firmly, as though she didn’t expect any sort of argument. She clearly hadn’t realised quite who she was talking to.

 

“Professor, I’m going back to Hogwarts. I get that you think I need  _ supervision _ or something, but I’ll be fine. I was fine last night and I’ll be fine ‘till Severus gets out of hospital.”

 

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that. You can’t be in the castle alone--”

 

“It’s not your choice to make.”

 

Harry had stood up without registering the movement, and though he’d said it at a reasonable volume it carried. 

 

“It’s not your choice,” he repeated, and the Elder Wand in his back pocket seemed to itch to be used. “You’re not my guardian. You’re not even my professor; it’s the holidays. You don’t get to tell me where I go. It’s not your castle--” 

 

He remembered the way the room in the Chamber had chimed, how the snakes had turned to him, and realised he was about to say ‘it’s mine.’ The words turned to stone in his throat. He breathed out sharply through his nose, and said nothing. 

 

He managed to drop a few Muggle notes on the table and nod a ‘sorry’ to the doorman on his way out, pushing into the crowd until he could drop into an alcove and Disapparate.

 

⁂

 

Grindlewald battled his way through the headwind, exhausted from cross-continental apparation and the stinging loss of someone he’d never been able to explain. He let a  _ confundus _ befuddle the ticket-man into letting him into the Gare de Lyon-Part-Dieu, cursing the glass-happy French architecture that left the platform exposed on all sides. He pulled his hood low over his head to hide his distinctive shock of white hair.

 

He hadn’t been on a train in, what, fifty years? There was never a station here before, and he’d landed in the Gare des Brotteaux only to find that it was now an auction house for rich Muggles to spend obscene amount of money on the things that passed for art nowadays.

 

Lights flashed from every direction; boards burnt advertisements into his retinas, and a voice in the ceiling blared announcements at the Lyon public at all hours of the day. He hated it. Muggle society had fallen even further into the chasm of technology while he’d been imprisoned, turning everything into a vapid annoyance. At least they’d manufactured a train that competed with the speed of a broom; he hadn’t relished the thought of the steam-trains he’d had to rely on in New York in the twenties.

 

No matter; in a few hours he would be in Paris, and from there he could seek refuge with what little remained of his support, and from there he could begin to rebuild. No matter what, if some portion of the Wizarding World still wore the Hallows, all was not lost.

 

The Elder Wand wouldn’t be gone from him for long. It was the nature of the thing to seek conflict, to throw itself whole-heartedly into any war it could find; all he had to do was put a fight in front of it, and it would reveal itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the world: *literally any inconvenience*  
> grindlewald: fucking muggles
> 
> ron: no people got hurt  
> molly: snape got hurt  
> ron: no people got hurt.
> 
> i'm worried that McGonagall comes across as rather negative here. i'm not trying to paint her as, like, a bad person, but she and Harry are operating on two different sets of parameters.


	14. seize my body for the dead i owe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a plot is hatched, to the distress of 1/2 of the conspirators; Wizarding prisons work about as well as Arkham; a man reconsiders his entire life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Two Gallant's Fly Low Carrion Crow, which is a great song if you want to be miserable.

 

“Good morning, sir. How are you feeling?”

 

Severus tried to glare at the healer, but couldn’t make out much more than that her robes were blue, and a glare isn’t nearly as effective if you can’t make cutting eye contact.

 

“Anaesthatised. And blind,” he said flatly.

 

The healer hummed in complete apathy. “I take it the cataracts have developed further, as expected?”

 

He nodded, and she moved to unwrap his arm. Severus was briefly thankful for the smoke clouding his vision, because what little of the deep red and bleach white he could make out was enough for him to feel sick to his stomach. Somehow, his lack of squeamishness didn’t stretch so far as himself.

 

He was suddenly very aware that the way that his hand felt cold and dead and missing might last forever. He thought of fumbling delicate operations with his left hand, thought of hard knots of scar tissue and stabbing pain, and breathed a shaky breath. Here, it seemed, was emotion that wasn’t blunted and muffled by the painkillers-- but even that was gone, and he was cold with fear, but not much more than that.

 

“We’ll be able to operate tomorrow, so you should have your sight back by Wednesday. How are your painkillers working?”

 

“Pain is fine. Everything else is uncomfortably muffled.”

 

“We can reduce the dose, but I’m not sure that’s wise.”

 

Severus attempted a glare again, and failed; he tried a sneer, and succeeded. “I value my ability to  _ think _ more than my comfort.”

 

The healer snorted, and Severus gritted his teeth. “Somehow, I’m not surprised.”

 

Her vague amusement was familiar, and something sparked a memory. He’d taught her, he thought; Edwin or Edmund Tawny, talent at transmutative potions and at insulting that year’s resident comic. Judging from her voice, she probably didn’t go by Edwin anymore.

 

“Did I teach you?” he asked, knowing the answer but wanting confirmation that he wasn’t losing his memory.

 

“Mm. I was in Hufflepuff. You didn’t like me much, but you made sure I got an O in my NEWT.”

 

Severus was conscious that not a month ago, by either reckoning of time, he’d have made some sort of cruel remark, told her something true but unnecessary, but he couldn’t quite muster the energy. It became clear that he’d let the silence stretch a moment too far to be comfortable, and he scrambled to fill it.

 

“I don’t much like anyone,” he tried weakly. “I wouldn’t take it personally if I were you.”

 

And then, driven by the knowledge that he’d died and done what he’d promised and no amount of cruelty had made the burden any easier to bear: “Congratulations on getting into medical school, Tawny. Very well done indeed.”

 

Even through the fog, he could make out the white of her smile.

 

⁂

 

A dog that wasn’t disappeared through the door of a house that didn’t exist, and Sirius lurched into the hallway, shook his matted hair out of his face and grinned. 

 

“Hello!” He bellowed, stretching the ‘e’ and clicking the ‘l’s in a manner to cheery for his aspect. He called again, this time somewhere between a howl and a scream.

 

He slammed the door closed behind him, shaking dust and paint-flakes from the doorframe. “Kreacher, you beast, you little mongrel, where are you?”

 

Kreacher popped into existence a foot away, and Sirius snarled on reflex, and then began to laugh a creaking laugh.

 

“There you are, you mad bugger. Let yourself go, have you? Kreacher is dying of  _ shame, _ is he?”

 

The elf truly looked as though he was, skeletal and almost as filthy as Sirius. His ears seemed too large for his head, the skin stretched tight over his bones in lieu of flesh. His bug-eyes blazed with hatred, and Sirius was reminded oddly of Bellatrix.

 

“Only shame here is the blood-traitor whelp, here to mock his family’s demise.” Kreacher spat his words, upper lip pulling upwards, and Sirius was impressed with his nerve despite himself. Bellatrix, indeed.

 

“That’s the thing, though. I’m the last of us, Kreacher. My family’s demise was  _ absolute.  _ It’s you and Bellatrix Lestrange, the pureblood fanatics, and she’s rotting in Azkaban and you’re rotting here, so guess what? I can mock them all I like, do whatever I wish to this, this museum of a house, because it’s  _ mine _ .”

 

“Traitor whelp is a fugitive and a criminal, Kreacher is not beholden to him, will not help him--”

 

“I  _ order  _ you not to tell anyone where I am.”

 

Kreacher went pale, and then purple with anger as the order settled. Sirius smiled, wolfish.

 

“Get out of my sight.”

 

Sirius had a great deal to do; he had to find that traitor rat, wherever he was hiding now; he had to meet his godson, his wonderful godson who’d somehow known he hadn’t done it; and he had to find some way to prove his innocence to Remus; but firstly, and most urgently, he had to take a bath.

 

⁂

 

Severus slid in and out of wakefulness, feeling his mind ebbing back and the ache sharpen into a sting, thinking vague and incomplete thoughts.

 

Lucius arrived just as the sun was setting; Severus couldn’t make out his features, but the light streaming through the high windows turned his bleached hair to bronze, and the clicking of his cane on the linoleum was distinctive. His eyes were slitted was he followed the man, and Lucius took a sudden breath as he noticed he was awake.

 

“Good evening, Severus,” he said, trying to cover his surprise.

 

Severus hummed, sardonic. “Is it?”

 

“How on earth did you manage to get hit by lightning in the middle of a very mild July?”

 

A quite bloom of anger grew in Severus’ chest at his patronising tone, but the sharp, clicking arrogance in his voice had been lost to the war the last time he’d heard it, and he couldn’t help a small smile.

 

“Research.”

 

Lucius, who had never done his own homework, who’d never once had to find a cure for an unknown illness with his won life on the line, had no idea what ‘research’ involved, and would accept it as an explanation for practically anything. Severus had learned this is fourth year, and made liberal use of it.

 

“Of course,” Lucius said. “And how is your prognosis?”

 

“Permanent nerve damage. Skeletal burns. I may or may not lose the arm.” Severus’ completely still expression was partly in order to unnerve Lucius, and partly because moving his face hurt.

 

Lucius clearly didn’t know how to process that, and smiled vacantly. “Ah. And the... face?”

 

Of course. The healers had been baffled as to why the surface wounds hadn’t closed, but Severus knew that their magical origin meant they were likely behaving as curse scars. He let a sneer form, felt it pull at the burn cutting across his lip and how the scar cracked, seeping blood back into his mouth. “Will be like this forever,” he said, flatly and with as much venom as he could muster.

 

The ceiling fan whirred; Lucius’ cane scratched the linoleum as he tapped it absentmindedly, and Severus refused to elaborate.

 

“I do have some good news, my friend,” Lucius started, clearly determined to ignore that. “Dumbledore’s death has finally put the board in a position  to appoint someone rational as Headmaster.”

 

Oh. Oh,  _ no. _

 

He’d run that school to the whims of a mad supremacist before, and he wasn’t going to do it again.

 

“The students’ll want McGonagall,” he said, voice rasping oddly.

 

“When have you cared an iota for what students want?”

 

He couldn’t exactly argue with that.

 

“Severus... I really must emphasise your position. I have plans for Hogwarts, this year. We have been idle, since our Lord died; I think it’s high time we honour his memory.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> severus: perhaps i need some... therapy. perhaps i could... be nice. occasionally.  
> severus: sounds exhausting. pass
> 
> lucius is so fun to write you find the poshest asshole you can find and then dye them blonde. edwina tawny is also great she's a snarky bit-part oc we're never going to see again but i like her already
> 
> comments encourage me to finish the next chapter (because i'm a lazy bugger and won't do it unless there's homework i could be doing instead.) :)


	15. a liar, but not a fraud

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is short, but FOLKS.
> 
> im DROWNING.
> 
> \- relationship BULLSHIT  
> \- school nonsense  
> \- my d&d group are being Little Bitches so i've re-done NINE different character sheets AND the monster stats AND the maps,,,,,,
> 
> anyway: sorry its short i guess. also the title doesnt mean much except brandi carlile's Sugartooth was playing when i published this

Isla Howard was a Muggleborn with few prospects and very little to commend her to anyone. She’d achieved her position in the Department of Records by seven years of diligent toil, but she had no particular skill or ability that would allow her to rise further than clerk. She thought privately that had she been pureblood, she’d be undersecretary by now; this wasn’t true.

Isla Howard had two great passions: record-keeping and the Underground. All aspects of record-keeping fascinated her, from double-entry bookkeeping to the taking of the Census; filing was the chief jewel of her week; her taxes were so meticulously accurate that HMRS had had her investigated nine times, sure she was getting away with mruder somewhere, and she had made a particular study of the legislation of privacy of records in Magical Britain. The Underground was a different sort of passion altogether. Record-keeping could be considered a Ravenclaw passion, studied for the joy of knowing; the Underground was a Gryffindor sort of passion, an organisation that she threw herself into headfirst for the joy of falling, filled with fury for the truths that they taught her and brimming with clandestine joy at the only thing in her life that didn’t fit into a spreadsheet.

And, of course, it was an exciting week to be a member of the Underground. The Underground had been Grindlewald’s in name since its inception, but until yesterday he’d run it with the minimum of oversight from Nuremgard; Isla looked to his reorganisation with fascination. There’d been a rash of interesting break-outs, recently; some uncivilised Death Eater mass-murderer had been sprung from Azkaban just that morning, and she expected that to play itself out in some fantastically gory way.

(Perhaps the real reason Isla had never made it past clerk-hood was her habit of using phrases like ‘fantastically gory.’ Perhaps the way she could make atrocities sound like chess games was slightly unsettling.)

Isla had spent the morning processing requests in a meditative sort of daze, and found herself shaken out of it very dramatically at half past two in the afternoon, when a moral dilemma landed in her in-tray.

It was already processed and accepted; the moral dilemma was not in the custody filing, which seemed to be entirely sensible and above-board, but in the fact that it concerned one Severus Snape, and the Underground had a standing order to report any pertinent information on him to the district manager. This would be all well and good, if Isla had not been so fascinated by the law of record-keeping, and had not known that several laws concerned the recording of information about minors prohibited her sharing the request with anyone.

For perhaps the first time in her tenure at the Record Office, Isla stood in silence rather than complete her duties, and allowed personal thoughts to intrude upon her ability to do her job.

After several minutes, she raised a hand to the hollow of her throat, tapped the glamoured tattoo as though unaware of the movement, and took a copy of the request. The original was filed, she started back in on her in-tray, and moved on with her day.

 

⁂

Harry dropped out of the crowd in London and landed, still breathing hard, a few metres out from the gates. He breathed in the cold air, tried to let his anger evaporate and failed. He shouldn’t have yelled- probably shouldn’t have left at all-- he knew that now, and he knew that as he was doing it, but he’d let his temper win out against his common sense.

McGonagall, sleepless and grieving and sick with shock, swam in front of his eyes. He drew his wand, turned it in his hands and remembered how it had sung with desire to be used. It shined, pale, against his dark skin.

He tried to put it out of his mind, and didn’t quite succeed.

He tugged on the gates, unable to fly over them, and grinned as the heavy bolt moved back at his touch. The ward boundry followed the wall almost exactly; he could feel it, like a charge across his skin. He stepped back, swinging the gates open with him, and rested his hands in the air where the magic curved. The wand disappeared down his sleeve, and magic hummed and shone in his fingers.

The arc of the wards glowed in response. Light branched out in swooping, fractal curls from his fingers, and he felt a great, joyful presence, like the castle saying ‘hello.’

He wondered if it was possible to talk to it-- her?-- directly, like when it’d possesed Severus but without the hospitalisation. It had no ears, so speaking was probably unrealistic, but it could clearly do some sort of legimency-- he remembered what little training he’d been given, and assembled an idea of McGonagall looking for him, of her trying her best but of how she couldn’t be allowed to remove him, and sent it forward as best he could.

The light hummed, the fractals grew and shifted, and he took that as an assent.

⁂

“Shit,” Severus said. “Holy fucking shit.”

He’d been shaken from his sleep by the Castle humming on the edge of his conciousness, and the sudden, unpleasant awareness that Potter had somehow changed the permissions of the wards.

This meant several things:

Harry was alone in the castle, which was all well and good for him, but probably not great news for his custody suit if anyone found out;

Harry had found some way to interface with the castle, which was supposed to be confined to him, and;

Harry wanted to keep someone out.

Severus’ self-imposed isolation meant many things - no-one questioned when he acted oddly, and he didn’t have to pretend to like other people’s children, for example - but it did mean that there was now no-one that he trusted to check on Potter.

There was, of course, at least one person still at Hogwarts. A query to the castle reported that Hagrid was still there, at least physically unharmed by the nonsense with the spiders. He groped for the clipboard, flipped to the empty pages at the back and discovered that having no dominant arm and being unable to see was not conducive to writing.

He struggled to shape the motion and the magic quite right, but eventually managed to cast a dictation spell.

Two letters were beaten out onto the cheap hospital cartridge paper, and Severus cursed his shaking wand arm as the quill scored into the paper when he spoke too harshly. One was to Hagrid, a polite letter asking him to check on Harry and then, when Severus remembered Tawny’s smile, an inquiry as to how the ancromantula were doing; the other was a considerably less polite letter to Harry, asking what on God’s green Earth he’d done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> harry, mentally communing with a castle: this is fine and normal!  
> severus, psychically linked via a perfectly legitimate method to said castle: THIS IS NOT FINE AND VERY ABNORMAL


	16. i was a teenage anarchist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i swear when i started this goddamned fic i didn't even LIKE snape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah, this is a bit out of the way, and i probably should have done something about the plot, but. i had an idea, so i wrote a shitty character study
> 
> im bumping this fic up a rating, probably. next chapter someone will smile, i promise.
> 
> warnings for vaguely described OCs dying in all the fucked-up ways angry teenagers died in Britain in the 1970s and 80s.
> 
> chapter title changed from some vague angry horoscope shit to 'i was a teenage anarchist' after the Against Me! song, which is this chapter's theme song.

The thing is-- the thing is, if people dislike you on sight, you don’t have to deal with them disliking you later. If people hate you because of the way you dress, or the way you look, or the way you speak, then they’re not hating you because of anything that matters.

 

Severus had worked this out by the time he was nine, and made good use of it.

 

In Cokeworth, it was hard. If everyone’s in poverty, threadbare clothes and caked-in dirt don’t mean much, so he’d grown his hair out and let it grow heavy with grease and cultivated a sneer and vaguely effeminate mannerisms, learnt to have an insult on his tongue for everything and everyone. Truth be told, it wasn’t  _ that  _ hard; as soon as he started it became second nature.

 

Lily had noticed, had a go at him for the way he treated her sister, but the other Evanses were middle-class enough that even without his veneer of cruelty they’d hate him.

 

In Hogwarts it’d been easier. The Slytherins all seemed to have the same cruel edge, and his long hair was standard, and wizards didn’t care so much about if a boy was a tad limp-wristed or too studious or painted their nails. What wizards cared about was easy; tattered clothes and tattered manners, muggle speech patterns and a disdain for anything extravagant, things he didn’t have to learn.

 

Few people saw past it; he’d never been able to tell if Lucius Malfoy had, in the end.

 

Lucius Malfoy had been the sort of boy it ought to have worked on. In fact, in Severus’ first year he’d hooked his head ‘round the door of his carriage, looked at him once, made a face as though he’d encountered a rogue mongoose, and left at speed, though he’d made his way back as part of the Prefect’s rounds and been marginally less awful.

 

When he’d been Sorted, though, he’d seemed to take it as a personal affront to his House to have him sitting there, and instead of trying to bully him home like the rest of the Slytherin Prefects, he’d decided to fix him.

 

It didn’t work.

 

Of course it didn’t, because Lucius was nowhere near as masterful a manipulator as he thought he was. Oh, he and his friends were good enough to convince Severus of some fucked-up half-truths, to convert him to his psychopathic neo-fascist supremacist movement, but Severus had been such a bitter child that that was easy.

 

Making him bearable to be around, making him show a modicum of compassion for the sorts of people they wanted him to sympathise with,  ‘civilising’ him - as Rabastan had so endearingly put it - was impossible, because you can’t fix other people.

 

You can only fix yourself.

 

(Severus was only just realising this himself.)

 

⁂

 

It would be giving him far too much credit to assume that he had fallen in with that cabal of Death Eaters purely out of a lack of options. There had been other people, other friends, who had seen through the bitter exterior to the bitter insides.

 

There was Lily, of course, but he didn’t want to dwell on her. He’d done that for an era, and it hadn’t got him anywhere.

 

Back in Cokeworth, not everyone was unbearable. There had been a loose coalition of kids that he’d fallen in with, by accident or by trickery. They were a vague group of spitfire maniacs and kamikaze revolutionaries and the too-cold, too-deliberate people who would describe themselves as ‘politically minded,’ but who all turned out to be more kamikaze revolutionaries in the end. Lily hated them, and they thought Lily was cool, if stuck-up.

 

He’d seen Sammy on the news, when he was nineteen, throwing rocks on some riot on a picket line. He’d been trampled by a police horse. 

 

Timothy had gone home with his dad to Ireland, and got shot. 

 

Samira had disappeared, while he was at Hogwarts, and no-one would tell him where she’d gone when he came back. 

 

Wilma joined the army, and no-one had talked to them since, and then they got beat to death’s door by their own unit trying to organise a protest about a human rights issue he knew nothing about.

 

They’d liked him.

 

He was angry, at everything, and so were they; he was too-sharp and too-clever and too-cruel and so were they. He spent three weeks at Emilio’s house, the summer between fifth and sixth year, when his mum was dead but his dad wasn’t. He’d slept on Emilio’s bedroom floor in a sleeping bag, and once or twice he’d woken up crying.

 

Emilio had tumbled off his bed and onto the floor, and landed next to Severus in a pile of bones and leather-dark skin. He’d looked at him steadily in the orange light from the street-lamp, eyes large and dark and expectant, and Severus had talked to him.

 

He’d talked about Lily, vague references to something unforgivable he’d said and the friends he had at school that encouraged him, talked about anatomy experiments and explosives that were stand-ins of the things he’d actually done. He’d talked about the time in winter when he’d tried to hurt one of the boys who hurt him, finally, and they’d tried to kill him.

 

Emilio had called him a twat and a bloody idiot, and pulled him onto the skinny little twin bed with him, and he hadn’t slept all night, just laid there ‘till dawn and felt a little bit lighter.

 

The mad muggles-- his mad muggles, his awful terrible headcase friends, had been all that was holding him back from the Death Eaters. He’d always come back from the holidays determined to put it all behind him, to ignore all the supremacist bullshit and just spend his time alone, but sixth year was different.

 

His mother was dead; Lily was alive, but he was dead to her; somehow, Lucius had known this. He’d stepped it up.

 

When Severus came back that summer, he couldn’t look at anyone without feeling sick for the things that he’d done and that he’d said. His dad had died, by then, so he had an empty house and inherited debts, and he paid them off by staying inside all day and brewing sketchy potions on commission. He spent his scraps of spare cash at the record store the other side of town, rather than the one Sammy’s dad owned; he switched churches from the one Emilio attended to the tiny little catholic one down the river, and then he’d quit going at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen. listen. he did shitty things. he's a miserable fuck, he tried to do Repentance even if he did it badly, he's got that Tragic Anti-Villian Motivation, and he's great fun to write, but he also joined a neo-fascist genocidal hate group. so, you know. balance.
> 
> comments... sustain me. like oatmeal.


	17. one maniac at a time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a little bit of heartwarming and a little bit of 'ancromantula are people actually'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here have some Hagrid i love him. thanks. also an explosion-bird.

He was fucked.

 

Sirius had done something perhaps more stupid than all the other stupid things he’d done. He’d allowed Remy to bait him into something foolish, and now he was on the run from execution, stuck in his family’s mausoleum with only fucking Kreacher for company.

 

He didn’t even have a plan. He’d just broken out, a split decision, slunk through the bars at the first opportunity driven by an undirected anger. He had taken only the barest measures to evade pursuit, made his way off that god-cursed island by the skin of his teeth, and he’d be lucky if they didn’t track him down in the next moment.

 

He was miserable, hungry and confined and feeling as wretched as Kreacher, a wretch hanging onto family history as a priest losing their faith hangs onto an answered prayer, that hellish, hell-claimed family history that shadowed his steps--

 

Here, at last, was a lead.

 

The Blacks had always been criminals, whether the law noticed or not, and they’d kept meticulous records. Some pirate or slaver in the 1700s must’ve had to track down an escapee, and his great-uncles were notorious for pursuing grudges half-way across the world. There had to be something in the Black library that’d allow him to track down the oathbreaker.

 

He had a vision of him, fleeing, as ruined and broken as Sirius had been, and laughed aloud at the joy of it.

 

⁂

 

Severus pursed his lips, and tapped his fingers against the table, and tried to make an owl appear by sheer force of will.

 

An owl failed to appear. An owl-shaped space seemed to hang in the air, where there should have been an owl but wasn’t.

 

(With his luck, if an owl  _ had _ materialised, it would be Harry’s mad beast, and it would savage him for some imaginary slight, and he would gain nerve damage on  _ both _ sides of his face.)

 

He’d gone to all that trouble to write those letters - he’d even gone so far as to include pleasantries! - and now he had no way to send them.

 

Thwarted. Foiled, and by a bird that didn’t even exist.

 

Red bloomed across his vision. An acrid smell made itself known, sick and chemical like petrol or the dry-earth stink of spent explosive, and there was a sound like the crackling of a bonfire but distilled.

 

Severus strangled the ‘what the fuck’ making its way up his throat, and managed to choke a “Hello.”

 

He extended a hand, feeling like he was appeasing a rabid hippogriff, and felt all the air in his lungs disappear as Fawkes leaned into his palm.

 

“You idiot bird,” he said. “You brainless fucking parrot. I killed your master.”

 

Fawkes chirruped.

 

Severus remembered what it was like to have a master, and figured that that may well be a reasonable reaction.

 

He slid his fingers into his feathers, uncomfortably, almost painfully warm against his skin, and an electric pain slid down his forearm where the nerves pulled wrong. It barely made a dent in his odd, euphoric, miserable calm.

 

“Why now, if not before?” He murmured, and an answer came back to him, glowing in the back of his mind:

 

“Once you took, and now I give.”

 

He rolled that in his brain, and failed to come to any sort of understanding. Another message came, almost indignant:

 

“This time the fault was  _ mine.” _

 

There was nothing that could be said to that, so Severus proffered the letters, and Fawkes-- surreally, ridiculously-- disappeared to deliver them.

 

⁂

 

Hagrid was a distant figure, making his way across the forecourt with the body of an ancromantula resting on his shoulders.

 

Harry clambered down the banking, and approached him at a steady clip, relief and guilt warring in his wind. He came to a hard stop and had to breathe heavily for a moment, but managed to muster his voice.

 

“Hagrid, I’m so sorry--” he tried to say, but was interrupted.

 

“Weren’t you what let the snake out, was it?”

 

Hagrid’s tone was quiet and ponderous, and his large, sad face looked very odd in the sunlight with the spindly corpse across his back.

 

Harry said nothing, and hated himself.

 

“I reckon ain’t nobody to blame.” Hagrid smiled weakly down at him. “ ‘E’s Slytherin’s beast, ain’t he? That you told me about? So he shoulda been let out automatically when the wards went. And he was only doing what comes nat’rally, to a basilisk, can’t fault ‘im for that. Damn fool spiders should’ve been more careful, but that’s their nature, too.”

 

“Are you going to bury them?”

 

Hagrid barked a mirthless laugh. “They’d be insulted. Waste of good food, putting it in the ground. No, I’m taking the ones that ain’t stone back into the forest, so their families can eat ‘em.”

 

⁂

 

Pale smoke drifted between the branches of the oak, and Harry blinked up at Fawkes in shock. Hagrid, next to him, appeared to be considerably more shocked, and it was probably a good thing he’d already put down the bodymor he’d have dropped it.

 

Harry stretched out an arm, and Fawkes flitted down, a flash of red that barely seemed to move between one resting place and the next, and then perched on his wrist with the distinct air that he’d done it only because it was a convenient place to rest. 

 

“This didn’t happen last time,” Harry murmured, and then “Hm? Nothing, I just wasn’t expecting that,” in response to Hagrid’s questioning look.

 

“Don’t suppose ‘e’s got anywhere to go, with Dumbledore gone,” Hagrid said heavily. “Why’d he turn up here, though?”

 

“He’s got letters. One for me and one for you, addressed in the worst handwriting I’ve ever seen.”

 

“Who’d be sending letters with Dumbledore’s bird? Hey, you don’t reckon...”

 

Harry laughed, half mirth and malf misery. “No, I don’t reckon. They’re probably from Severus. Dumbledore isn’t sending us letters from beyond the grave.”

 

“Don’t look like his handwriting.”

 

“Well, he has only got one working arm.”

 

“What?”

 

Hagrid goggled at him, shocked and horrified. “Are we talkin’ about the same Snape?”

 

“Oh, damn, you missed the debacle in the Great Hall. Yeah, shi- stuff happened. We figured out what was messing with the wards, though, and they’re back up now, and Severus got hit by lightning.”

 

Hagrid very pointedly looked up at the pale blue sky and back down again, and raised one thick black eyebrow in an expression of complete disbelief.

 

Harry made a face that he hoped expressed that he was confused too, not ‘I’m hiding something very significant,’ and opened his letter as a distraction.

 

⁂

 

“Would you look at that, he  _ did  _ get hit by lightning.”

 

“Told you so.”

 

⁂

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> harry absolutely did organise a massacre of a group of sentient people lol


	18. gifted and talented

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> book-shopping; inter-administration politics; severus needs a haircut

“How are you feeling?”

 

Severus attempted to raise an eyebrow, and became aware that it was a pointless and painful manoeuvre, with the entire upper portion of his face under bandages.

 

“I’m feeling fucking  _ fantastic _ , Minerva.”

 

“Honestly, Severus, there’s no need to be rude.”

 

He sneered, and this time it didn’t split the cut, which ruined part of the effect. 

 

Minerva’s steady, expectant gaze was tangible even without functioning eyes.

 

“What do you want,” he bit out.

 

“Your ward let a basilisk loose on the grounds of my school and you appear to be completely nonplussed.”

 

“He just does that sort of thing.”

 

He heard her breathing pick up, and if he could see he’d swear her fists were clenched.

 

“It was a very intelligent choice. I have made it clear that I’m not pleased with how he endangered his life, but there’s no denying it was a good solution to a castle overrun with ancromantula.”

 

“And now there is a basilisk, presumably living in the Forbidden Forest, capable of killing with its eyes.”

 

He reached out to the wards, and knowledge settled in his mind.

 

“The snake is basking on the top of the greenhouses, and I expect it’ll go back to sleep shortly. Very little has changed; the basilisk was always there, except that now we know about it. Those things can sleep for centuries, you know.”

 

“I suppose there’s very little we can do.”

 

He hummed in agreement, and a slice of nerve misfiring across his mangled neck cut him off.

 

“There’s something else,” she said. “You’re hiding something.”

 

“Not exactly. But Malfoy visited yesterday, and it’s bad news.”

 

“Oh, God. I’d almost forgotten about the board.” A shift in the air, and the thud of her boots, indicated that she’d begun to pace.

 

“He views... recent events... as an opportunity to install some of his supporters in the school administration. Most importantly, he intends to appoint me as Headmaster.”

 

The ventilation hummed; healers rushed down the corridor outside, and Minerva said nothing.

 

Finally, after time had filled all the available space, she collapsed back into the chair.

 

“You don’t want to be headmaster,” she said, voice faint and far-away.

 

“Nobody wants me to be headmaster. That may be the point. He expects me to be so hated that a Headmaster entirely of his choosing would be accepted without struggle once I’d been deposed, I suspect.”

 

“If he can get a majority from the Board- and I suspect he can, if he’s contacted you- there’s nothing we can do.”

 

“I do not intend to run the school to his whims, however much he may believe me to be pliable, but I will need your cooperation. He intends to sow discord among the faculty, whom I do not expect to react favourably, and use their discontent as an excuse to replace them.”

 

“I’ll call a meeting. You’re the master of the wards, I suppose; the current staff are barred from the building, I’m not quite sure why. If you can allow access, we’ll hold it as soon as you’re out of hospital.”

 

_ Why the fuck did Harry exclude Minerva?” _

 

“I’m to be released tomorrow morning, but I intend to take Harry to pick up his school supplies and then spend a very long time making sure he won’t do something so foolhardy again.”

 

⁂

 

Severus was sprawled in one of the waiting room’s vinyl chairs, an NHS-standard grey plastic cane across his knees, and what had been mottled scabs and blisters days ago was now deep red scar tissue. A section of his head had been shaved down to the skin, presumably to allow the healers to dress the burns that arched across his skull; he’d brushed the hair away and over the other side, baring the skin. He held his head oddly, carefully high, baring the blue-black impact site.

 

He looked as proud and untroubled as Harry would expect, except for the way that he stood when he noticed Harry, leaning on the cane and swaying as if though in high wind.

 

“Surprisingly,” he said, “It appears that one requires their arms to balance.”

 

Harry wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, attempting to treat with delicacy someone who he’d never had to accommodate at all. Thankfully, Severus didn’t seem to care, and set off towards the door at a steady clip, despite his odd, lurching gait.

 

“We will pick up a wand from Gringotts, and then we will have breakfast, because I have been subsisting on hospital gruel, and then you will explain exactly why you have barred Minerva from Hogwarts, and then we’ll sort out your schoolbooks.”

 

This was listed in a quiet, monotone voice that left no room for argument, and Harry suppressed the urge to whine; he’d thought they were going to Ollivanders and then back home to Hogwarts, and the reminder that he had classes and textbooks was an unwelcome reminder.

 

“Hang on,” he started, confused. “Why would you get a wand from  _ Gringotts _ ?”

 

“Is it not standard practice to prepare for the event that one’s wand is destroyed in a freak lightning strike? If you have no already got one, I would recommend you acquire a spare wand and keep it in a secure location, in addition to the backup you keep on your person.”

 

“Yeah, I guess. I do have a spare, but I lent it to Hermione, and I guess she still has it.”

 

“Miss Granger has her own wand.”

 

“She didn’t have one on her when I picked her up, and I reckoned it was best to face the basilisk armed.”

 

“What, exactly, do you expect a twelve-year-old to do against a literal hellbeast?”

 

“She hexed it, actually. Blasted it up against a wall. It impressed it, I think.”

 

Severus stopped still in the thoroughfare, and stared unblinkingly at Harry. 

 

“Mister Potter,” he drawled, “I defy you to recount any portion of your life in a way that does not give me a heart attack. I have already been defibrillated three times in the last three days. I tire of it.”

 

⁂

 

Harry had expected to pick up his schoolbooks for Second Year - he’d need them for classes, even if he expected the Second Year curriculum to be a breeze - and was as such rather surprised when Severus dropped a copy of Moste Potente  Potions in his basket.

 

Severus saw his face, and made the same exhausted expression as he’d made when Harry mentioned hexing the Basilisk.

 

“You completed the first year of your NEWTs, did you not?” he snapped.

 

“Yeah, but I’m going into Second Year again.”

 

“I may not be teaching your class, but I expect you to perform to the level you’re capable of. Do what you wish in other subjects, but in Defence and Potions, I expect NEWT-level work.”

 

“I-- yeah, OK, fair enough. But it’s been about a year since I last did any revision.”

 

“That’s why we’re buying your textbooks now. You have the rest of the summer to get up to speed.”

 

“That’s barely a month!”

 

“We haven’t been in this decade for more than a week and you’re already complaining about running out of time. You have five weeks; while I’m not sure of the mechanism, I expect you to begin classes with the Seventh Years.”

 

Harry’s immediate reaction was a furious, childish anger, but he beat it down. He stared mulishly at the books in his basket, traced the elaborate curl on the ‘p’ with his finger and remembered the thrill of getting the Draught of Living Death perfect that first time in Slughorn’s class.

 

“I suppose I can put up with that,” he conceded, drawing an unimpressed eyebrow from Severus.

 

⁂

 

A glint of light off printed teeth caught Harry’s eye.

 

“Severus,” he hissed. “Severus we have to leave right now, right away.”

 

“What? What’s wrong--”

 

“Lockhart is coming.”

 

Severus turned on the point of his cane and set off at an unprecedented speed towards to door with a desperation Harry had never seen from him before.

 

“No, wait, we have to pay for this--”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> harry: lockhart is here  
> severus: FLEE
> 
> harry: we have to pay for things  
> severus: property is theft, money is arbitrary
> 
> minerva: theres a death-snake in my school  
> severus: its ok its napping
> 
> everyone is Keeping Secrets. shh
> 
> yeah so in other news u may have noticed this is marked as part of a series. i intend to wrap this particular section of said series up in a few chapters, go over it with a fine-toothed comb - i opened some threads that im not going to close, the pacing here is inconsistent (this chapter in particular barely anything happens, but im stuck on the next few scenes and i wanted to put something up) etc. etc. and then start writing second year after that, which should deal with all those things where u went 'hey wait, did Ace just forget about X?' i didnt, but probably should have introduced those plot points Later.


	19. another halo to shake loose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Bookshop Scenes(tm)
> 
> severus does some Creeping via legimency; lucius is an Ableist Asshole but also possibly severus' closest friend, which fuckin' sucks; a horcrux is retrieved.

Ultimately, the hassle of paying for their books prevented them leaving immediately, and Harry and Severus had to take refuge upstairs from the menace of Lockhart. This afforded Severus the opportunity to hear Lockhart’s entire speech, including the announcement that he’d be taking the Defence position - this time with some clearly fraudulent flagellation about Dumbledore’s death - and gave Harry a prefect view of Severus’ expression.

 

His face hung between panic and fury, with a fair bit of self-pitying pouting misery. It was in stark contrast to his earlier careful dignity, and Harry couldn’t help thinking it was because it was only him and Severus on the mezzanine. He wasn’t sure if Severus didn’t mind him seeing him a little ruffled, or if he literally didn’t register as a person on his radar; either was equally possible.

 

Lockhart finally ran out of hot air, and started heading to the exit, and Harry was able to move back to the balcony. He caught a flash of red hair, and leaned up onto his toes to wave to the Weasleys, but--

 

Ginny.

 

Harry retreated into the stacks to have a very small breakdown. 

 

⁂

 

The monster that was Lockhart had finally left, and the oppressive crowd had abated slightly, so Severus felt it safe to leave the shadowy upper floor. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of looking for his itinerant ward, forgot to pay attention to his immediate surroundings, and found himself face-to-face with yet another vacuous, irritating, arrogant blond.

 

“What,” Lucius spat, “Is _ that? _ ”

 

Severus cast about for a subject, finally realising that Lucius had taken offence to his standard-issue cane. He had to admit, it wasn’t exactly elegant, but he did need it to move properly, and would until he’d got his balance sorted.

 

“It’s functional and temporary, Lucius, it doesn’t need to be inlaid with rubies.”

 

Lucius’ cane, of course, did have actual rubies for eyes, because Lucius seemed determined to look like a comic-book villain in every aspect of his life.

 

“My friend, I can’t allow this.”

 

“You understand, Lucius, that I have spinal damage.”

 

“Yes, I know, it’s a tragedy, wasted potential et cetera et cetera, but that’s no excuse to dress sloppily. Give it to me for a moment.”

 

Severus proffered it warily, half-irritated, half-intrigued, and also faintly ill at the way he’d said ‘wasted potential.’ Lucius drew his equally ostentatious wand, and transfigured the whole thing - with more swirling movements and humming than was strictly necessary - into a shining dark-wood spike that Severus had to admit was both elegant and very, very threatening.

 

“There!” chirped Lucius, making the beatific face he made when he expected gratitude. “We can’t have the Headmaster of Hogwarts walking around looking like a crippled Muggle.”

 

Severus had the sudden and overwhelming desire to stab him with the cane.

 

“Speaking of the School, my friend, I do have some concerns about Mr. Lockhart’s ability to teach our Wizarding youth what, perhaps, they need to know. He doesn’t quite seem the right sort. I understand you didn’t appoint him, but when the vote goes through perhaps you could see your way to reviewing his position.”

 

“I quite agree. He is... underwhelming.”

 

Thankfully, because if the conversation had carried on any longer Lucius would be compelled to offer more opinions on his injury and Severus would have murdered him in cold blood, Harry finally emerged from the labyrinth of clearance shelves where he’d been hiding.

 

“Hey, Severus?” he asked quietly, prompting a questioning hum.

 

“I know we’ve paid already, but can I pick this up as well?” Harry said.

 

He was holding a very tattered copy of a textbook on animancy from when it was taught as a NEWT. Severus wondered briefly if it was worth giving him yet another realm of knowledge to be a foolhardy idiot in, but conceded to the part of him that was still a teacher and encouraged him to learn anything he was interested in.

 

“Of course-- the crowd should have abated enough for you to make it to the register.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

Lucius was making a very strange face, with one eyebrow raised and an odd, twisted half-smile

 

“Animancy, Severus?” he murmured. “That’s a very dangerous field. Plenty of opportunities for a young man to go astray.” 

 

His face brightened. “Wonderful initiative, my friend. Very well done. Potter’s support could be a great boon to our people. If you’re able, bring him to supper next Saturday-- I’ll talk to my man, we’ll sort you out with a non-transfigured cane for your troubles.”

 

The cold, queasy feeling came back, and this time Severus wasn’t quite sure why.

 

⁂

 

“Are you so poor you have to get a teacher to buy your schoolbook? Did your poor dead parents not leave you enough money, Scarhead?”

 

Seeing Malfoy again was a revelation.

 

Here he was-- tiny, sneering, cruel, skin pale from pampering rather than neglect, narrow eyes not darkened by lack of sleep, face rounded from a lack of desperation and plenty of good food. Harry hadn’t appreciated what the war had done to him until he’d seen him before it, and his childish, unthinking cruelty was almost beautiful.

 

He’d turned out alright, in the end. Malfoy here, biting petty spite, was more of a product of his father than of himself, and Harry couldn’t fault him for any of it.

 

He couldn’t help a giddy laugh.

 

Malfoy made perhaps the best face. Harry wanted to preserve the moment forever, take a photo of his expression and keep it in his pocket for the rest of his life.

 

With his round, twelve-year-old face, his huge shocked eyes and narrow mouth and wide, delicate cheekbones, he resembled nothing more than a ferret.

 

“It’s good to see you too, Malfoy. Have a great summer.”

 

⁂

 

“Mrs. Weasley.”

 

“Professor Snape.”

 

Severus had faced off against a great many opponents in the Game of Glares, but few with quite so much fury as a Molly Weasley who was convinced he was a bad influence on her son. Her thoughts were floating at the very surface of her mind, and he hadn’t needed to try at all to hear them. He couldn’t even dispute any of her points.

 

“I hope the youngest Mr. Weasley is fully recovered from his encounter with the ancromantula. I understand he was quite shaken.”

 

“He’s fine,” she replied in an equally monotone voice. “No thanks to your ward.”

 

“Harry has been informed that he’s not allowed to kidnap any more of his friends without their parents’ consent.”

 

Harry’s voice came from where he was buried in ginger children: “What about kidnapping my enemies?”

 

“You may do whatever you like to Draco Malfoy so long as it remains within the bounds of the law.”

 

“What about if the law wouldn’t find out?”

 

“Harry, you’re not allowed to murder the boy, no matter how much it might be a mercy to the rest of the world.”

 

A corner of Severus’ mouth twitched as Molly’s opinion of him went to war with her opinion of the Malfoys. With the conversational overtures out of the way, he was able to proceed onto the matter at hand. He’d thought of no tactful or subtle way to approach the subject, and so faced it head-on:

 

“There is a Dark artefact in your daughter’s shopping bag.”

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

“I suspect Lucius Malfoy put it there. It seems like the sort of thing he would do. I recognise its magical signature; if you give it to me, I can destroy it.”

 

This, of course, put Molly further into the Pit of Moral Quadrandy. On the one hand, to argue with him would be to shift blame away from Lucius Malfoy, a man who was the antithesis of everything the Weasleys stood for; on the other hand, to accept what he’d said would be to give a Dark artefact to a man who was listed, quite accurately, under ‘Trouble’ in the filing-cabinet of her mind. He stood for a few moments as the currents swirled within her eyes, and finally gave into the temptation to nudge her a bit, not commanding but suggesting that her thoughts might move a certain way.

 

“Fine,” she hissed, and fished the diary out of Miss Weasley’s effects.

 

Severus took the battered thing gingerly, felt the magic roll against his fingers and marvelled that such a corrupted, unholy thing could look so harmless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> malfoy: weak insult  
> harry: You Are Like A Little Ferret
> 
> we've passed 30k and this is still a fuckin' prologue holy shit.


	20. nothing good is ever easy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> snape is a douche sometimes

Severus seemed to move through water.

 

His eyes looked past the walls as they had when he’d been nearly blind. It was surreal, to hold a portion of a person in your hands, and it gave you very odd ideas about your own soul. Harry had asked him to hold off on destroying the diary for now and he’d looked at him with that blank, swaying incomprehension, and truth be told Harry had looked at himself like that too, but-- 

 

But he’d had an idea. It was blurred and formless in parts and sparkling knife-blade sharp in others,  an idea made of razor-wire and candyfloss that lurked wherever he set his eyes, and he couldn’t escape it.

 

By the time they’d made it up to the solarium he was less pale, but still seemed a little shell-shocked. Harry busied himself with the cutlery, which horrified Sandy when she arrived with lunch to find the table already set, and seached his brain for a topic with which to distract Severus.

 

This was pointless, because as soon as Severus was presented with a cup of deep-black too-sweet tea he seemed to emerge from inside of himself.

 

“I have,” he started, and then made his customary humming noise of consideration. “News,” he settled on finally.

 

Harry suppressed a wince. “Good news or bad news?”

 

“That depends, I suppose.” Severus took a sip, visibly relaxing. “Bad news: Lucius is attempting to capitalise on Dumbledore’s death by taking over the school.”

 

He said it in such a flat tone that is was almost comical.

 

“Good news: he’s attempting to do it through me. There will be a board meeting tomorrow; he intends to appoint me as headmaster.”

 

“You’re already headmaster.”

 

“Magically, yes. But firstly, that affords me no particular authority over the faculty; and secondly, Lucius doesn’t know that.”

 

“Right.”

 

Harry turned his cup of tea in his hands; golden chrysanthemums shone on the ceramic, and tea-leaves settled into an indistinct, lemon-scented portrait of the future.

 

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Harry said, “But --”

 

“It should be Minerva, yes. Beyond that, Flitwick. I agree with you. I am uniquely unqualified to run a school, and had I a choice, I would resign. But Lucius can appoint whoever he chooses, and I at least would not intentionally run it into the ground or engage in massacre.”

 

“I mean. You did. Run it into the ground, that is.”

 

“Yes. This time, I don’t have to. I may, of course, turn out to be unable to do anything else, but this time I hope for fewer casualties.”

 

Harry snorted into his soup.

 

“Hey,” he said, “I was looking over the NEWT textbooks and I wondered if I could have Neville over to teach him some Second Year potions. I mean, they’re your labs, but I think it’d do a lot of good to give him some confidence.”

 

“Anything that prevents Mr. Longbottom from risking his life and those of his classmates while brewing the simplest Swelling Solution is a boon,” Severus said, upper lip curled in disdain.  “You may use the experimental labs, but if he dies, the blame lies at your feet.”

 

Harry couldn’t help a frown, and set his spoon with a ‘clink’ that echoed more than it ought to.

 

“He’s not that bad,” he said, voice steady and quiet and hard.

 

Snape soldiered on, heedless of Harry’s tone. “ _ Please _ ,” he drawled, “The boy’s a halfwit. He could injure himself with a spatula.”

 

“Why do you have to be such an asshole all the time?” Harry bit out, a muscle jumping in his jaw.

 

Snape’s face went slack for a moment, before he marshalled a mask of neutral surprise.

 

“Have I said anything that isn’t true?” he murmured, almost politely.

 

“You can be honest without being cruel. And Neville’s a disaster in potions because he’s fucking  _ terrified _ of you. You were his boggart in third year.”

 

“A classroom needs discipline--”

 

Harry’s skin was flushed and warm, and he had the hot, sick urge to move, to hit something. He pushed his chair back so hard it hit the wall, and stood to pace across the room.

 

“There’s classroom control and there’s threatening to poison the boy’s toad! Look, I know you  _ can _ be kind and helpful and, and polite, sometimes, even if it’s under duress, but you think that because, what, you’re bitter and angry and fucked up that you can be a dick to kids? They don’t care how you justify it to yourself, all they know is that you’re supposed to be helping them but instead you take any opportunity to insult literal children!”

 

Severus was pale and still, his face creased with anger, but he said nothing in his defence; his left hand clenched on the arm-rest of his chair, and his knuckles were so white as to be almost blue.

 

“The thing is-- the thing is, Severus, that I know you can do better. With me, lately, you have. And in sixth year-- You’re so good at potions, the things you’ve discovered can make other people love it too. But you don’t do that, and you could, and it’s a fucking tragedy.”

 

Light lanced through the glass ceiling like a javelin; dust shone in the sun, and a red kite screamed somewhere out of sight.

 

Severus jerked out of his chair and stood stock-still, gripping his cane like a weapon. His face broke and built itself together again; he glared daggers at the ground. “I’m going for a walk,” he said. “Make sure the wards let McGonagall in.”

 

⁂

 

Harry stood at the threshold and looked on in dismay as the runes oriented to him before he’d even entered the room. 

 

“What do you  _ want,”  _ he hissed, irritated.

 

He took a step to the right, and sure enough they followed him, shining silver snakes.

 

He shrugged his old Nimbus off his shoulder and lifted off the floor, and thankfully they seemed less able to find him, forming into a loose circle marked with futhark at the cardinal points. Drifting further into the room, the circle tracked him lazily, but at least they couldn’t touch him.

 

“Why,” he murmured, “Does this sort of thing keep happening? Can I just rest for once in my life without fucking... magic runes imprinting on me or another screaming match with Snape or nonsense with the wards?”

 

“Can Telemachus take a nap without the little Lord disturbing them?”

 

Harry whipped round, nearly toppling off the back of his broom, to find Telemachus’ head resting in the doorway. Only one of his eyes was open, a milky film across it indicating that it’d chosen to leave him alive for the moment.

 

“I-- sorry,” Harry stuttered.

 

“Be silent.” It hissed, dropping out of sight back into the cavern.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, writing this, speaking aloud in an empty room: Yes Harry Go Off
> 
> telemachus just wants to sleep in the dark for centuries and eat people and honestly? hes the most relatable character here. telemachus hungers for Peace the same way i hunger for comments :)
> 
> very many thanks to raninbury, who gave me a hand with the dialogue :)


	21. setting as a metaphor for depression

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nerve damage fucking sucks; Harry goes exploring.

Severus dropped out of the flames into the living room in Spinner’s End, cold from head to toe. Fawkes alighted on the mantelpiece, sending ribbons of flame and curls of smoke out along the path, and acrid, rainbow oil seeped down the sleeve of Severus’ robes. The bird stared him down coldly.

 

He nodded sharply, the only thanks he was able to give in that sort of almost violent mental state.

 

Doors shook in their frames as he stormed upstairs, slamming them shut behind him, but when he turned on his heel in his old bedroom, the bird still perched there behind him, head cocked in spite.

 

“Stop  _ looking _ at me!” Severus said, in a voice somewhere between a whisper and a scream.

 

The beast screeched at him, just as malicious and furious, needle-teeth shining and its forked black tongue rising like a snake out of the chasm of its maw. A twist of fire, a crack and a sudden pressure like plastic explosive igniting, and it was gone.

 

Severus flushed red with shame and anger, turned his face to the ceiling and closed his eyes tight against hot tears.

 

The room was stifling, thick with smoke and petrol-fumes. He fumbled for the window-latch, clumsy with his left hand, and wrenched the windows open. Smoke seeped into the street, and he leaned over the cliff of the sill, breathing in the cold air with desperate gulps.

 

_ How dare he, how dare he.... _

 

The truth stung in his eyes and burned, acidic, in the back of his throat. Petrol shone on his good hand.

 

He pulled back from the window and pulled the blackout curtains close, one side then the other one-handed, the cheap plastic hooks shrieking and rattling at the force. His shirt-sleeve, black and rainbow like spilled oil on tarmac, was cold and slick; he brought up his right hand, shaking, and managed to close his fingers around a button, but when he tried to push, the muscles in his forearm - what remained of them - convulsed, and a liquid pain spread down his nerves.

 

He reached for his wand, turned it in the air-- but the magic wouldn’t flow quite right down his left hand, and the wand was too shaky, the movement reverse. Three buttons came undone; no more. He snarled at nothing.

 

Perhaps... Magic gathered in his scarred fingertips, and shook over his buttons, and he cast wandlessly.

 

A button embedded itself in the wardrobe; Severus hissed at the sudden, stunning pain.

 

It felt like the lightning was back, burning down his blood-vessels and following the iron.

 

No more of that, then.

He breathed out hard through his nose, heart beating like a drum in his fingertips. His anger was hotter now, sick and churning under his skin, humming with pain like a cornered animal turned vicious.

 

He’d left the castle to calm down, to let the anger bleed itself to death, and it hadn’t. This was, at best, unproductive.

 

He cleaned the oil off his hand, disposed of his ruined shirt, and shrugged on the only shirt he could find without buttons, a thick wool jumper that he hadn’t worn for close to a decade. He felt faintly ridiculous, but a minor loss of dignity was better than that barbed-wire sting.

 

⁂

 

The water was still and silent, green with algae and reeking. Heat rolled across the tarmac path, the sun high now, and the dry earth was dark and dead. The sky was so blue as to be almost white, the colour bleached out by the heat, and the shadow of the millinery tower was stark against the light.

 

When he was ten, before Hogwarts, he’d thought that going down to the river was a great treat. There was so little green in Cokeworth that the reeds and mangled oaks and even the choking pond scum was exceptional. Until the Black Lake, he’d never seen a body of water without litter.

 

Of course, now he’d seen spaces completely free of the touch of Muggles,  the shine of pollution on the water and the floating bottles were by turns nostalgic and depressing.

 

A parakeet screeched; footsteps followed him.

 

His heart leaped into his throat. They followed at the same pace as him, treading lightly to avoid detection; he was in no fit state to defend himself, and had only just began to walk without swaying.

 

He stopped, making a show of looking out over the water; the footsteps stopped, too.

 

He drew his cane up into such a position that he could use it as a club - although it would do precious little against a wizard with a grudge. How shameful, to die of an ambush in a blue woolen jumper, on the banks of a dead Muggle river.

 

As he stood still, with no signs of moving, his elusive opponent seemed to grow confident, and started forwards slowly.

 

Soon enough, they grew bold enough that Severus could hear their quiet breathing, and he spun on his heel in time to catch a figure darting into the shrubbery, spooked. He snarled, and spun the cane out like a whip, hitting the figure hard across their chest.

 

“What the _ fuck _ !” a voice shouted, shocked and without the crisp vowels every aristocratic Death Eater had, and a Muggle man flung themselves out of the greenery.

 

Ah. He’d grown so paranoid that he’d assaulted some hapless Muggle.

 

“Holy shit,” the man murmured, one hand absent-mindedly rubbing where he’d been hit. “It actually is you.”

 

Severus squinted, and--

 

Emilio. Less thin, surreally aged, but with the same deep brown eyes. 

 

⁂

 

Harry held his breath as Telemachus disappeared back into the earth. Once he was less flushed with terror, he relaxed, and looked down at the runes once more. He wanted to say “Fuck it,” but couldn’t, infuriatingly. 

 

Slowly, as quietly as possible, he lowered one foot onto the floor. To his relief, they didn’t try to touch him, only twined in a tighter circle. The runes that marked the borders didn’t change, just shrunk, and he figured he ought to try and decipher them. Parchments scattered the desk pushed up against the south wall; he walked slowly across the room, setting his feet down tentatively, and the quiet susurrus of the runes moving over each other filled the room. He winced, and hoped it wasn’t enough to risk Telemachus’ deciding he didn’t want a Lord after all.

 

The parchment was actual parchment, leathery and almost transparent, and it was so smooth against his fingers that it felt like it would be a crime to mark it. There was one scroll still open, not tied with green silk, and he held it up to the light.

 

It was a list of names, the most recent - Emira Ul, Jack Canterbury - scrawled in dip-pen cursive, but further up the list they changed. Some were written in angular blackletter, ornate and almost incomprehensible; others in a stretched, uneven cursive that reminded him of Queen Elizabeth the first’s letters in the British Museum, and a great many in a thick, round italic script, and right at the beginning - in a round hand, and all in capitals, like the Old English texts Hermione had pored over in fifth year - was  _ ſælþar ſlyþerine _ . Salazar Slytherin.

 

Of course, he must have built the library himself; and it had clearly been used since, judging by the French desk and the few modern hardbacks on the shelves; other Heirs of Slytherin, or maybe just people like him who’d found the Chamber by accident, had updated things, and noted down their names as some sort of record, a medieval ‘Harry Woz Here.’

 

Tom’s name wasn’t on the list, as Riddle or as Voldemort; maybe he’d thought himself above it, or more likely he’d found Telemachus and left it at that, never explored further, because he’d thought that a thing he could kill with was the best he could hope for. Either way, it was a small pleasure to write ‘Harry James Potter’ in the neatest script he could manage, after conjuring some ink to fill the dry inkpots. He’d put his name somewhere Tom had never been able.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no jokes today sorry to disappoint im all word-ed out, try again tomorrow
> 
> re: fawkes:  
> until i was thirteen i always thought a phoenix was some sort of dinosaur demon thing. why would an immortal fire-spirit not be scary. i want more eldritch shit. absolutely fucking macabre and incomprehensible on main


	22. flowers grow out of my grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus uses one (1) social skill; Harry obtains a hyperfixation.

“I thought I recognised that distinctive profile!” Emilio laughed, a broad smile stretching his face.

 

Severus drowned his anger at the jab at his nose with his confusion; he hadn’t seen him in decades, he’d hit him with intent to incapacitate, and Emilio smiled at him like that. His brain made the sound a computer makes when offered input in badly-spelled Sumerian, a sort of baffled  _ doink. _

 

Emilio extracted himself fully from the vines and his smile dimmed as Severus leaned heavily on his cane.

 

“I’m sorry for sneaking up on you - I ought to know better by now! But I didn’t want to ambush some stranger if it turned out not to be you, and then you’d noticed me, and then it was impossible to explain...”

 

He trailed off, and looked oddly upset and strangely awkward. It was disconcerting, for Emilio to be awkward with him; they’d gone from closeness to complete isolation and now they appeared to be stuck in this strange limbo where Emilio had to explain himself to Severus.

 

He let a smile creep across his face, less from happiness and more to put Emilio at ease. “It’s good to see you,” he said, suddenly and awfully conscious of how the burns had deepened his voice and how his mouth pulled to the side from scarring. “I thought you’d left Cokeworth.”

 

“I did!” Emilio said. “I got my medical degree and everything. I was going to be a pathologist, do a PhD in forensics, but I, uh...” He trailed off, and smiled a little sheepishly. “Dad had another kid. You remember what he was like--”

 

Severus did. Fathers in that bit of Cokeworth seemed to be all alike, one bitter drunk in a hundred bodies.

 

“-- He wasn’t exactly fit to raise a child, so I sort of gave up on pathology, came home. I’m the GP at the practice on Enfield street, now.”

 

The two of them set off along the river again, Emilio walking slightly too fast, but it was better than standing like statues on the bank.

 

Severus took the opportunity to turn ‘he wasn’t fit to raise a child’ in his head, and came to some unsatisfactory conclusions. A reed-warbler made the noise it was named for.

 

“What about you?” Emilio said, almost too loud. “We thought you moved away, too. And, ah...”

 

“The face?”

 

“The face, yeah, is what I was going to ask about.”

 

“Struck by lightning,” Severus said, delighting in Emilio’s expression.

 

“You’re shitting me.”

 

“I’m not.”

 

“Well, damn.”

 

“I did move away, though. I kept the house on Spinners’ End, but I live up in Scotland, most of the time.”

 

“Well, I got it half right, I suppose.”

 

The atmosphere cleared a little; they ambled up a towpath and onto the street, Severus put distressingly out of breath by the slope.

 

“So, what, you looked after your sibling ‘cause your dad couldn’t?”

 

“Yep. Lucia is technically my sister, but as far as I’m concerned she’s my kid. You? I wouldn’t think you were the ‘kids’ type, but you’ve got that harried look and I wasn’t the kid type either, until I was.”

 

Severus barked a laugh at his perceptiveness. “I am the... guardian of someone, but I’m not his parent. He’s seventeen, and he’s made it clear he objects to people parenting in his direction.”

 

“Yeah, that doesn’t mean shit. People don’t stop needing families just ‘cause they’re over sixteen, or seventeen, or whatever. You and I were both almost independent by seventeen, but we shouldn’t have had to be.”

 

Well, that was strange. Barely a minute’s conversation and they were already discussing their vaguely traumatic childhoods. He’d noticed that people with children seemed to want to talk about them all the time; perhaps when they thought that he, too, had kids, he was inducted into the club of Let’s Talk About Parenting For Hours.

 

“He’s not exactly likely to let me,” Severus said. Let him do what, he wasn’t sure. Parent things. “He had-- He said some things. Just now.”

 

“Teenager’s mindless cruelty?” Emilio peered at him from the corner of his eyes, head angled sympathetically.

 

“I would have preferred that, I think. No, he was just. Honest. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before, but for some reason this time I actually listened.”

 

“Well.”

 

Severus sighed. “I’ve always had a temper--”

 

“No shit.”

“Shut up. I’d always been a bit volatile, but this kid says nothing that wasn’t true and my first reaction was  _ fury. _ ”

 

“And now you’re questioning your entire moral system.”

 

“Pretty much.”

 

Emilio laughed, dryly, and Severus felt oddly light. He wasn’t sure what had possessed him, to say all that, except that Emilio had been the only one who’d cared when Black had tried to kill him, and he was completely removed from the mess of the War.

 

“Listen,” Emilio started, hesitant like he had been earlier. “Me and Johnny and Em are going to the local tonight. Come with us. Have a pint. Complain about how awful kids are.”

 

He’d used ‘children are awful’ as an excuse to be awful in return for years. He felt a little ill.

 

“I’ve got a meeting tonight, actually. Tomorrow?”

 

“Sounds good.”

 

Emilio gave him the side-eye again. “Trust the mafia to hold meetings at nine o’clock on a Sunday evening.”

 

Severus suppressed a laugh. “I’m not in the  _ mafia _ !”

 

“Sure, Severus. That’s completely believable.”

 

⁂

 

This library was the  _ shit.  _

 

He’d got that basic animancy book, and that was cool _ , _ ‘cause it seemed to explain how, exactly, a soul could be split, and its gave him  _ ideas, _ but the textbook had very clearly been censored. There were things about souls that someone didn’t want students to know. Fair enough.

 

It seemed that Salazar Slytherin believed otherwise, and his successive Heirs had been kind enough to translate his library from West Anglo-Saxon into English. Some had added more. It was a veritable treasure trove of Unwise Things To Do.

 

_ Regarding the Shape of the Soul,  _  C.S. Lewis, a manuscript that explained how magic and the soul were linked;  _þe Art and Crafte of Animacic Tincturs,_ by someone who he thought might actually be Rowena Ravenclaw; all manner of other scraps and scrolls of theory and experiments, all with fascinating implications.

 

He thought he might understand why Hermione chased knowledge with such a passion, now. Here, in the dark of the Chamber, nobody knew what he was doing; he could find out things not for a grade, or for recognition, but just for the joy of knowing-- and the soul was such a nebulous, concrete, brilliant and vital thing that knowing  _ was _ a joy.

  
Harry was going to resurrect a dead science. It was going to be  _ awesome. _

__

as promised last chapter, here is a scruffy watercolour demon-dinosaur-bird:

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emilio: acts vaguely kind, demonstrates some wisdom  
> Severus: time to Idolise. where are my rose-tinted glasses


	23. monopole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> magnets; severus tries to be good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its the middle of exams i dont have to update weekly oK  
> there was supposed to be more to this chapter, but i figured some would be better than more nothing.

Spinner’s End dropped away in a storm of red, and Hogwarts shone beyond the smoke. Fawkes dropped him out on the far bank of the Lake, and he weighed the opposing sides of ‘damned bird lives to inconvenience me’ and the way the reflection of the castle in the water was glowing in the bright golden evening.

 

Cokeworth was grey. Pollution dyed the sunsets red and purple, but cinderblock buildings soaked up the sun and the soaped-over windows of failed businesses draped everything in misery-tinted monochrome. He didn’t know how Emilio had done it, gone back there once he was free for the sake of some kid. He didn’t belong there.

 

They’d meant to separate at the turning, but then Severus had mentioned how they’d cut his hair to debride the burns, and Emilio had burst into bubbles of laughter and sniggered that he’d thought it was like that on purpose, and Severus had been very firmly pointed at a barbers a few minutes away. Of course, that meant that Emilio had to walk him there, he’d been told, very firmly, and he was-- pleased?-- to see that the awkwardness was gone, that he teased at him like that.

 

It was surreal. The whole thing didn’t make any sense. Severus doesn’t go for walks along the riverbanks with childhood friends. He doesn’t talk about parenting, he doesn’t feel bad about bloody Neville Longbottom, and he certainly doesn’t sport the ridiculous haircut they’d given him, shaved down to the skin in a sweeping arc from just above his ear to his neck, plaited back.

 

Sinestra and McGonagall’s brooms were left in the entrance hall when he’d made his way back to the castle, so he assumed the meeting was underway; he glanced at Fawkes in the hope that it’d see fit to take him there, but it stared back with an expression comically devoid of sympathy. It looked, in other words, exactly like it did all the time; there is only so much sympathy an animal that is essentially a perpetually-alight dinosaur can muster.

 

⁂

 

It wasn’t animancy. Harry had thought, when he’d first read about animancy, that it was an explanation. This was something else entirely.

 

He held a bundle of ribbons in a fist, let his magic bubble out of his skin and seep into the silk; when he filled his other hand with the power and held it out opposite, the ribbons twined out of his grasp and hung in the air between his hands. He thought of iron filings and and bar magnets, experiments in primary school. 

 

The watch on his wrist ticked backwards.

 

⁂

 

Severus stood outside the meeting-room for a minute to regain his breath - his heart still wasn’t quite right, and his balance was an issue on stairs, even with the cane. Steeled, he pushed the door open with his shoulder and insinuated his way in.

Insinuated was in fact the right word; he was careful to make no sound, to move sideways to the world, and the only person to notice his entrance was Filius, who ceased his complaints about materials budgets to blink at him. He had the sudden urge to swoop up behind Minerva and say ‘boo,’ but that would be juvenile.

 

Instead, he remained silent as he circled to his seat, and let the faculty notice him one by one. His entrance would have been better had he been wearing properly dramatic robes, but Pomona’s shock at seeing his face more than made up for his navy blue jumper. This ‘scarring’ thing might offer some fun after all, in the form of other people’s reactions, at least until the novelty wore off. He smiled thinly, and let his upper lip bend as the scar pulled it.

 

Minerva, very satisfyingly, noticed his arrival last, and scowled at him. “Honestly,” she remarked to Pomona, “He asks for a meeting and then turn up late--”

 

“Wait,” Filius broke in, “Why would you call a meeting? Has something happened?”

 

Severus turned to Minerva and gazed expectantly, but she merely raised an eyebrow. Blast; he was expected to explain things.

 

“Lucius contacted me while I was in hospital,” he said tersely. “He intends to appoint me as headmaster, in hopes of exerting a Death Eater influence on the school.”

 

The room erupted.

 

Belatedly, he realised that announcing a Death Eater conspiracy at this point in time would stretch credulity, and he’d have been better off just saying ‘pureblood,’ but perhaps a little shock would help his colleagues understand the gravity of the situation. Regardless of what was and wasn’t public knowledge, Lucius was directly serving the Dark Lord, via the Horcrux or otherwise.

 

Filius, next to him, appeared to have having some sort of seizure. He’d broken into loud, gasping protest, and it was getting irritating. Severus remembered what had worked to corral his staff when he’d served as Headmaster before, and raised his right hand for silence, keeping his face impassive.

 

It worked at least a little, and the shouting slowly petered out.

 

“Trust me on this,” he said slowly, “I am as opposed to the situation as anyone else. Unfortunately, outside of freak events involving the wards--” Minerva narrowed her eyes at him, and he carefully did not smile, “The Board has the final authority to appoint whoever they like. My resignation would merely allow Malfoy to choose someone more, mm, extreme.”

 

He took a deep breath, and stared at the wall above Pomona’s head, unable to make eye contact. “I would like to make it clear that I have no intention of marching to Mr. Malfoy’s tune. Unfortunately, it is vital that he believe that I am. I am going to need your co-operation to stop the situation from devolving.”

Minerva leaned forwards over the table, giving the whole thing an unnecessarily surreptitious air. “As much as we would all prefer this to be a scheme by Severus, it’s true. The board is convening tomorrow to appoint a headmaster, which they wouldn’t do if I was to succeed Dumbledore. The situation is not what I would have chosen, but it’s best that we all pull together to get through this and head off Malfoy as much as we can.”

 

Pomona  _ did not like that. _ She snarled, and Severus was reminded very suddenly of how Rabastan had refused to go after her in the First War. 

 

“I don’t know why you’re just rolling with this, Minerva, but the Snape I know would be more likely to organise a coup with Malfoy than anything else. A Death Eater conspiracy sounds like the sort of thing you’d organise than oppose. And regardless, I don’t want you in charge.”

 

Anger burned in his chest at the accusation, but-- She hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. He’d had the same sudden, defensive reaction to Harry, that morning. He hadn’t screamed, or thrown things, or cursed  _ anyone -- _ and he’d felt fine, afterwards. When he’d let the anger go, left so he couldn’t get angrier, then he’d been able to see that it didn’t make any sense to be angry.  He breathed out, stayed impassive, and tried to let the anger go, to see beyond it.

 

Pomona did not.

 

His face - as impassive as he could keep it, which was very - apparently infuriated her, and she stood in a rage, pushing the table hard into his chest as she stormed out of the room.

 

What was the use in keeping his temper if all it got him was a bruise and a jarred shoulder?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is giving snape a modern-style undercut both anachronistic and self-indulgent? yes. shut up.


End file.
